MANSFIELD — Mansfield police officer Alan Edwards said he believes it takes a village to raise a child — and to keep them safe.
“If we spend more time investing in our futures, I hope we can protect them and leave the world better than we found it,” he said.
Edwards has been in law enforcement for 25 years, but just joined the Mansfield Police Department’s community policing neighborhood impact team recently.
He took charge of organizing Saturday’s “Safe Surfin” child identification event at the Buckeye Imagination Museum. Kids of all ages from less than one year old through age 18 were invited to the free event.
“We have law enforcement agencies from all over Richland County here, so people can meet the officers that keep their communities safe on a daily basis,” Edwards said.
“It’s great to see this many people coming out and doing something good and important. The management and staff at Buckeye Imagination Museum have been extremely gracious to us to host the event.”
Parents or guardians filled out a paper with a child’s name, birth date, gender, race, hair color, eye color and recorded any distinguishing marks. The child IDs also included home addresses and phone numbers.
Officers helped record the child’s height, weight, fingerprints and photos to store on a CD. The computers wiped any information after transferring data to the CD, so only the child’s parents have the data.
Buckeye Imagination Museum offers entry vouchers for kids
Fred Boll, Buckeye Imagination Museum executive director, said this was the second year the museum has hosted the “Safe Surfin” child ID event. Each child went home with a free entry voucher for a future visit to the museum.
“It’s really important for kids’ safety to get IDs done, and we love helping out with these events,” Boll said.
Lexington Moose Lodge 2511 sponsored the event. The lodge’s administrator Scott Gossett said the organization sponsors child ID events and elderly identification.
“The Moose fraternal organization works with law enforcement to help protect our children and our seniors,” he said. “This would be important to have done for folks with Alzheimer’s or elderly at risk of wandering off too.”
Gossett said the Moose Lodge 2511 has sponsored events with the Safe Surfin’ Foundation for about 15 years.
“Once a parent has the information on a CD, they can download a copy to their computer or put it on a flash drive to share with grandparents or anyone else who takes care of their kids,” Gossett said.
The Mansfield Police Department and other agencies have previously hosted similar events at The Ontario Center, Altitude Trampoline Park and the Richland Carrousel. Edwards said MPD hosts the event at least annually.
Sgt. Patrick Williams said the data can come in handy locally or when families are traveling.
“In the event that a child would go missing, let’s say in a vacation spot, if you’ve traveled with that disc, you can provide that to the local police department,” he said. “Then they have a basis to start their search and disseminate information to other local jurisdictions in that area very quickly.”
Children also received Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) goodie bags from police cadets Saturday.
