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Held twice a year, in spring and fall, the event offers hundreds of community members free pizza and soda while providing an informal setting to meet the officers who serve them.
Similar to Coffee with a Cop, the gathering is designed to make conversation easy. Sharing a meal gives residents and officers a chance to get acquainted and build connections beyond their everyday encounters.
The idea has a short but widespread history. Coffee with a Cop began in 2011 in Hawthorne, California, where the police department started it at a McDonald's, hoping that chatting with customers over morning coffee would build conversation and, over time, trust. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, within five years it had been held in every U.S. state and in Europe, Canada, Australia and Africa.