The holiday season is a busy time for community organizations, and that is no different for the Levelland PD’s Blue and You program.
The Blue and You program, is a 501c3 organization that was developed in March of 2020 with a primary of enhancing the community policing efforts.
Levelland Police Chief Albert Garcia explained that the purpose of the organization is to strengthen the relationship between the community and the department.
“Our Blue Santa program is something that gets us excited and when we first put this together, we knew right away that doing this annually was going to be the new tradition,” said Chief Garcia. “Being able to be a part of these kids holiday experience is special and that is one of the things I enjoy about what we are able to do as an organization and a department.”
For the Blue Santa program, this year the organization teamed up with Love Levelland who has taken the lead role for families in need of assistance when it comes to holidays.
Essentially, they took the responsibility from the Hockley County Family Outreach program. “We teamed up this year with Love Levelland and we’ve sponsored 19 kids this year similar to last year,” said Chief Garcia. “By sponsoring, means that we’re going to have 19 kids that we’re going to pick up on Saturday, December 17th and have some fun.”
A team of police officers will go and retrieve all 19 kids from their homes and will be taken to McDonald’s and have a Christmas breakfast with them.
McDonald’s owner Bill Cohen and his staff will be a part of the festivities for the second year, “They have sponsored the breakfast meal with these kids and we can’t thank them enough for what they do,” said Chief Garcia. “Mr. Cohen is always a great supporter of Love Levelland and the police department.”
The early morning party will being at 8 a.m. at McDonald’s to have breakfast with the kids and then by 9 a.m. they will leave the parking lot there and start the escort.
“There will be a whole line of police vehicles with lights and sirens and all that kind of stuff like that we’ll have a line of police vehicles that’ll be traveling to Walmart where we will go and take these kids in to shop with them and purchase items for them for Christmas,” explained Chief Garcia.
Additionally, the group will have some other things that they’ve have planned for the for the event.
“We have stockings that we give the kiddos, and we have different types of things that Love Levelland is doing specifically for families,” said Chief Garcia.
This year, Love Levelland has worked with a large number of families and children to spread holiday cheer for those who might need it the most.
Roughly 200 kids and families in that number have joined the Love Levelland program and will be doing additional activities.
However, for the Blue Santa program, the police department is focused on the 19 children who signed up.
“We’re looking forward to doing this for the holiday season and starting early Saturday morning,” explained Chief Garcia. “We’ll get to spend some good quality time with some great kids.”