Inflatable slides, bounce houses and hot dogs galore will fill different sectors of the community. Kids of all ages will be able to run around and neighbors can get to know the people they wave at on the daily. Police officers will spend their time off getting to know the people they serve.
An evening full of block parties and cookouts will be held across the Bryan/College Station area for the annual National Night Out celebration on Tuesday, Oct. 3. Officers from the College Station, Bryan and Texas A&M University Police Departments as well as the local sheriff's office will be attending parties within their jurisdiction to answer questions and create connections with their community.
On the first Tuesday in October, the National Association of Town Watch hosts the annual event in hopes of building stronger relationships between communities and their police. Another primary purpose of the nationwide event is to create strong relationships between neighbors so that if something suspicious happens in a community, people are more likely to feel comfortable enough to report the incident to authorities.
College Station Police Department, or CSPD, Public Information Officer David Simmons says people can get involved by checking their neighborhood social media to see if there are any block parties happening nearby. He says if not, they should consider hosting their own party and registering with the correct police department for their jurisdiction so that an officer can attend.
“We're able to answer questions or give advice on how to go about different things within your neighborhood, keeping neighborhoods safe, what to be looking for, as far as crime trends and things like that,” Officer Simmons says. “The main thing is getting neighbors to meet other neighbors that way they have built relationships with them, but also, we're hitting our goal of building effective relationships within the community.”
Different neighborhoods will have block parties according to their demographic. Last year, the Southern Plantation neighborhood participated with hundreds in attendance, plenty of food and lots of inflatable slides for the kids. He says that older communities obviously won’t be quite as rambunctious, and both give great opportunities for officers whether that’s having longer conversations or getting to interact with the kids in the area.
“It's always something that we strive for is to get more people involved,” Officer Simmons says. “With today's day and age, [people] come home, and don't go out and really speak to [their] neighbors or anything like that. So, this is a way to bridge that gap.”
With the goal of connecting with neighbors, anyone is welcome to participate in National Night Out and can choose to have a small block party or a major neighborhood bash. For those who don’t have as much time to dedicate, people can show support for police and community relationships by turning on their porch lights on National Night Out. One misconception is that the police are just out to write tickets and ruin peoples days, Officer Simmons says, but that’s not the case at all.
“We are community oriented,” Officer Simmons says. “We want people to know that they can come to us, they can stop and talk to us, whenever we're at a gas station or something like that they can approach us and ask us questions, even if it's hard questions. Or if they need help with something, we are here to make sure that everybody feels safe within their community.”
If you’re thinking about hosting a cookout or block party, be sure to register your celebration so that an officer will attend. For more information about National Night out, you can visit the City of College Station website or to register your event, fill out this form.
