The trunk of treat gave the community a little fun face-to-face time with Cullman’s police officers. (W.C. Mann for The Cullman Tribune)
CULLMAN – On Wednesday evening, the Cullman Police Department celebrated Halloween in style, with decorated personal and department vehicles, games, tunes from a DJ and, of course, candy by the crate for a community “trunk or treat” party. It was a family affair for the department; walking down the line to refill candy buckets, Capt. J.P. White pointed out to The Tribune a number of police spouses and children were on hand to help with the event.
When the gate opened at 5:30, a dense line stretched from the department parking lot over halfway back to Depot Park. An hour into the event, a constant influx of arrivals had kept the tail about where it had been at the start. By 7 p.m., the long line had dissipated, but a steady flow of new guests continued coming through the gate. The department was pleased with the turnout.
Chief Kenny Culpepper told The Tribune, “We’re just glad that we’ve got such a good turnout. The weather held up, so it’s just a perfect evening for it, and everybody’s having a good time.”
Sgt. Adam Clark and Rita Bailey oversaw the plans for the event. Bailey, who prefers to be a behind-the-scenes kind of worker, declined an interview, but Clark was glad to share:
“This is our second annual–last year was our first year for this–and this year we decided to kind of go a little bigger. And thanks to the help of Ms. Rita Bailey, our chief’s secretary–I couldn’t have done any of this without her; she has really helped me get this thing together. And, with the help of Merchants Bank: I went to them and said, ‘Hey, we’re looking for a sponsor; we want to make this bigger and better than ever.’ And they jumped right on board and, as you can see, they came out in droves. There’s as many or more of them out here as there is police officers out here. And they really brought it together.
“Parks and Rec. has let us borrow games, and Wal-Mart–we got all our candy from Wal-Mart, and they helped us out a little bit on that. And I think we have a great turnout, and, hopefully, each year, get bigger and better.”
Kerry Hanvey, who coordinated the efforts of Merchants Bank, shared, “We support our police department. We believe in them, we want them to know we’re behind them. So, when they came up with this event, we talked to Adam, and he talked to us about helping out. We always used to do the ‘Shop with a Cop’ donation, and we just decided that this would be something we wanted to get our employees involved in and show our support to our community and our police department.”
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