HOLLAND, Mich. (AP) - After serving up over 10,000 frozen treats last year, the Holland Department of Public Safety is gearing up for another busy summer of events with its Operation Polar Patrol ice cream truck.
The ice cream truck was unveiled in June 2017 and was the second-ever police department ice cream truck in Michigan, The Holland Sentinel reported. According to Police Chief Matt Messer, the Holland Polar Patrol truck was only the fourth such police ice cream truck in the country.
From starting out with a donated ice cream truck and frozen treats, Holland police have been surprised at how popular Operation Polar Patrol became.
“Last year being our first year, I really didn’t know what to expect,” said Sgt. Larry Matzen, who came up with the idea for the ice cream truck. “From all the people we served, it far exceeded what I thought we were going to be able to do.”
Matzen oversees the department’s community policing efforts, which includes a citizens police academy, a junior police academy, several in-school interactions and a National Night Out community party in August.
By far, Matzen said the ice cream truck has brought about the largest number of interactions with Holland citizens than any of those other efforts. Over the 65 events Operation Polar Patrol was booked for last year the department tracked 11,000 interactions with the public. For Matzen, that’s the whole point of having an ice cream truck at the police department. With a limited number of community policing officers at his disposal, Matzen tries to be purposeful in creating ways to form positive relationships with as many community members as possible.
“Some of these events have easily 300-500 people,” Matzen said. “You try to get to the children when they’re young and impressionable and they still look at officers as something to look up to. But they also come up with their parents, and you can see in the parents’ faces they want some ice cream too.”
Matzen said he’s had people who he knows have been arrested by Holland police officers come up to the ice cream truck and be happy to get ice cream from a police department that previously put them in handcuffs.
“It’s a completely different interaction,” he said. “We’re still humans and we want them to get something for free. Our main goal is to be out there doing non-complaint driven contact.”
Though Matzen hopes the community is happy with getting free ice cream, he said Operation Polar Patrol is also an investment in the police department’s future. If more people have a generally positive association with the Holland Police Department, Matzen said that could make his fellow police officers’ jobs safer when they have to respond to potentially dangerous incidents.
“I look at it is that I’m getting toward the later end of my career, and I’m looking at the younger guys we’re hiring now,” he said. “I’m hoping that developing those relationship in the community will make these new officers jobs a little easier in the future. It’s an investment for all of us.”
Over the first year of Operation Polar Patrol’s use, all of the ice cream handed out by the police department came from donations. Feeding America, Meijer and Peachwave all donated frozen treats to the department. This year, additional local businesses like Hutt Trucking Company have donated even more ice cream. But Matzen realized early on that a police department doesn’t have the facilities to store and freeze 10,000 ice cream treats.
So, he turned to another area business, Request Foods.
“We have three large freezers here at the police department and some coolers,” Matzen said. “So we’ll go to Request Foods on the north side and they go with a forklift and slap the pallets of ice cream down for us. We go through and get a weekend’s worth of ice cream at a time. Without them, we probably would not be able to do this thing. The logistics are just nuts.”
This has become the norm for Matzen’s interactions with local businesses, with Crown Motors donating the actual truck and Graphic Gurus donated the design and decals for the truck.
“I’ve gone from worrying about a budget to having an administration that supports us and involving the community,” Matzen said. “That’s one of the biggest things in Holland is we have built relationships with people over the years that are very supportive of us and the community is willing to step up and help when they see a need for things.”
Request Foods President Steve DeWitt said his company was happy to help.
“Request Foods loves to give back to the community,” DeWitt said via email. “This is one small way to help the Holland Police Department show their support for the kids in the community.”
While the Holland Police Department is still taking requests from the community to have Operation Polar Patrol show up at events, the schedule is getting full. Matzen said people started trying to book the ice cream truck for this summer as early as last October.
“Right now, I’m looking at our board and we have some days where we’re double and triple-booked,” Matzen said. “From now until Aug. 29, we’re already counting 44 different places we’re going to be at.”
Some of those events include HerrickFest on Saturday, June 23, Holland’s LGBT Pride Fest, National Night Out in August, the Holland Farmers Market, community cookouts and numerous charity events.
Matzen has fielded several calls from other police departments around the country asking for advice on how to start their own police ice cream truck programs, including departments in California, Massachusetts and North Carolina.
“Right now, it’s a little too early to measure success, but based on the requests and the repeat requests this year for us to come out, we’re happy,” Matzen said. “Last year we were working out the kinks and this year, I want to make sure this is a sustainable thing. I think the community is pretty happy with it and we’re forging the way for West Michigan for this type of police activity.”
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Information from: The Holland Sentinel, http://www.thehollandsentinel.com
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