Can groceries help police earn trust? Grassroots group hopes so in SC-wide initiative
It wasn’t suspects who police were hauling from a warehouse on the campus of the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy on Thursday. Instead, boxes of mac and cheese, cans of beans and other groceries sat in the back of police vehicles, headed for communities across the state.
Serve & Connect, an organization that helps build police and community relationships, began its first statewide initiative that it’s calling “Greg’s Groceries.” Named after Forest Acres Officer Greg Alia, who was fatally shot on duty in 2015, the initiative provides boxes of groceries for police agencies to deliver to people and communities. It’s about more than stocking people’s pantries, said Dr. Kassy Alia Ray, Greg’s former wife and executive of Serve & Connect.
“It’s creating an opportunity for that positive engagement” between police and communities, she said.
Police from the Midlands, Lowcountry, Pee Dee and Upstate signed up for the initiative. About 800 boxes of food will be packed up and delivered. Each box feeds a family of four for about a week. If an agency runs out of boxes, Serve & Connect will host a community event with that agency to pack more boxes. Serve & Connect plans to pack boxes and distribute them statewide at least three times a year. Money donated by AT&T and FirstNet as well as the South Carolina Bar Foundation funded the initiative.
In a time when the most visible moments of policing are destroying people’s trust in police, particularly in communities of color, Alia Ray and police hope that helping people with basic needs rather than solely being enforcers will help earn trust. But she’s realistic about the initiative.
“A box of food probably isn’t going to change that and it’s not going to fix systemic issues,” Alia Ray said. But it’s a start.
It’s a start that’s measurable in it success — an important component of the initiative.
Police talk a lot about “community policing.” But how is a police agency’s relationship with a community measured? Alia Ray believes food boxes and engagement around those can be a measurement.
The idea is that if the food boxes help build communities’ trust in police, then those communities should engage with the agencies about the food boxes in some meaningful way, whether it’s talking to an officer about how to best deliver the food or connecting officers to people who are food insecure, thus needing more boxes. The groceries are a conduit to building relationships with communities and their leaders. And those relationships can get to the root of crime affecting communities.
A warehouse off Broad River Road usually used for physical training for police had the atmosphere of a factory at work after a news conference Thursday to introduce Greg’s Groceries. The sound of packing tape being stretched over food boxes rose above the chatter among dozens of officers from across South Carolina. With a slight sheen of sweat from the rising warehouse temperature, Sgt. Anthony Viehweg of the Columbia Police Department put cans of baked beans into boxes along an assembly line of other Columbia officers.
The Columbia Police Department and Richland County Sheriff’s Department have been partaking in the Greg’s Groceries initiative for about four years now. In that time, Serve & Connect has refined the process to best work for communities.
The boxes “create that open line of communications” with people in communities surrounding West Beltline Boulevard and areas of Two Notch Road where he patrols, Viehweg said.
“We say ‘we’re here to help. We’re not here to hurt anybody. We’re not here to keep anybody down,” he said. “We’re here to improve these communities and help out as best we can.”
Food boxes “have really helped break down that fence and barrier” and earn people’s trust, Viehweg said.
Now all the major Midlands agencies will be part of the initiative, including Lexington, Cayce, Springdale, Forest Acres, West Columbia police departments and Lexington County Sheriff’s Department. The York Police Department and the sheriff’s offices of Chester and York counties are also participating.
“We want to see our communities supported,” said York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson. “It’s a great icebreaker for those that maybe don’t have as must trust.”
The officers stopped the packing to hear criminal justice academy Director Jackie Swindler speak about his support of Greg’s Groceries.
When his mother used to make him a meal, she would always say, “Could you taste the love in it?” Swindler remembered.
“I’m convinced that these boxes right here may have some drops of sweat ... but they’ll have some drops of love in them,” he said. “When people get these boxes they will feel more than the comfort of that food. They’ll feel the care and the love of law enforcement and communities working together.”
The police agencies and organization partaking in the program are:
- South Carolina Law Enforcement Division
- South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy
- South Carolina Sheriffs Association
- South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers Association
- South Carolina Police Chiefs Association
- South Carolina Fraternal Order of Police
- Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office
- Camden Police Department
- Cayce Police Department
- City of Columbia Police Department
- Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office
- Forest Acres Police Department
- Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office
- Lexington Police Department
- Lexington County Sheriff’s Department
- Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Department
- Richland County Sheriff’s Department
- Springdale Police Department
- West Columbia Police Department
- Charleston Police Department
- Charleston County Sheriff’s Office
- Goose Creek Police Department
- North Charleston Police Department
- Georgetown Police Department
- Timmonsville Police Department
- Chester County Sheriff’s Office
- York County Sheriff’s Office
- York Police Department
Honea Path Police Department
Greenwood Police Department
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 3:28 PM.