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Lawton police bring canines to schools for Red Ribbon Week drug-awareness presentations
Summary
Lawton Police Department officers visited local schools during Red Ribbon Week to demonstrate police canines, explain their work and give students drug-awareness and safety tips, department representatives said. Officers said outreach includes school visits and public events but did not specify how many schools or provide a schedule.
Lawton Police Department officers visited local schools to mark Red Ribbon Week, bringing police canines and giving students information on drugs and how to refuse them, an LPD officer said.
"We came to welcome our Red Ribbon Week for awareness of drugs and just giving them presentations with our canines and our canine officers, giving them a lot of information to keep them safe and information about drugs and how to say no," an LPD officer said.
A second LPD officer said the department participates because officers interact with children both inside schools and at public events. "The reason why LPD wanted to come and be involved is because not only do we interact with the children in the schools, we also interact with them outside of schools, you know, in public events and whatnot. So we wanna come and be a part of it as well," the officer said.
Officers described bringing the canines so children can see them up close and understand what the animals do in the field. "We brought the canines to the schools to let the kids get a good visual on the dogs, our canines themselves, and also to let them know what their work is, what they're doing if they ever see them with the canine officers," an LPD officer said. Officers added they try to answer students' questions during visits.
Speakers said the outreach aims to reach as many schools as possible and to teach practical safety tips. "We try to get to as many schools as we can to talk to them about safety and awareness. To at least help 1. If we can't help 1, maybe help more. I hope that they take everything that we said to them to heart and really listen to what we had to say because we gave a lot of really good tips on how to be safe," an LPD officer said.
The officers did not provide a schedule, a count of schools visited, or specifics about curriculum or materials used during the presentations.
