GPD, community mingle during National Night Out event

Organizations working to ensure access to health care, food, housing and a healthy environment took center stage during a National Night Out event that showcased how Greenville can be a healthy community.

The Greenville Police Department’s Night Out celebration, held Tuesday with a festival atmosphere at the Town Common, is an annual community-building effort that promotes safety through police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie. Typically held the first Tuesday in August, Greenville has joined a growing number of communities that hold the event in October to beat the heat.

Devinder Culver, the department community projects coordinator, said the unofficial theme of the event this year was “a healthy community is a safe community.” Representatives from health, food, housing and environmental services were among the vendors at the event.

“That is what makes a community,” Culver said. “We are community policing so we’ve got as many sectors as we can to come together.”

The Police Community Relations Committee, for instance, distributed gun locks along with gun storage and safety information. The department also promoted its Support Team Assisted Response program, or STAR, that has professionals from Integrated Family Services respond with officers to calls with a mental health component.

“We are not mental health experts, so it’s good to have someone we can call who can handle mental health issues, which have increased since COVID,” Culver said.

Many people who met department Chief Ted Sauls wanted to talk about incidents they were involved in and if they were handled correctly, he said.

“Most of the time, when you have an event of this caliber, the people you are interacting with are wanting to learn. They are wanting to learn what we do, how we do it and why we do it,” Sauls said.

Two people Sauls met with encouraged him to have fun.

Sierra Denny, 7, and her sister, Finley, 5, convinced him to have a rainbow painted on his face. Their mother, Marion Denny, is a victim advocate with the department and Tuesday was the first time her daughters met Sauls.

Sierra also liked playing on the bounce houses, going in the emergency response team vehicle and the forensic vehicle, where visitors collected “evidence” in the form of snack-size Skittles. Finley also liked the bounce houses.

Master Police Officer Ashley Allen, a school resource officer, and Monica Memrick, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Sadie Saulter Educational Center, operated the face painting booth.

Allen was an SRO at Memrick’s school when they met and have stayed in touch.

“I volunteer with the PAL (Police Athletic League) program whenever I can,” Memrick said. She enjoyed National Night Out.

“I like to interact with the community and I get to see a lot of my old students from time to time,” Memrick said. “That part’s really fun. Just getting to interact with everybody, it’s really nice.”

Sauls said activities like the touch-a-truck, which featured first responder vehicles, give him and other officers a chance to explain why the department makes certain purchases, such as drones or an armored rescue truck.

“One thing we have to do as a police department, as any police department, is plan for the what-if,” Sauls said. “It’s like having a fire truck that fits a certain type of building. Whether we ever need it or not, if we need it, we’ve got it. It’s that way for any city department.

“At the end of the day, I want everybody to understand that it’s their police department, it’s not ours,” Sauls said. “We’re blessed to work for the city, doing our jobs and serving in our profession but the police department serves the city and we want them to feel like it’s theirs.”

Along with meeting the police and other first responders, National Night Out also allows Greenville residents to learn about other city departments such as recreation and parks, human resources, Greenville Utilities Commission and others.

Tuesday’s event was the second held as a single community celebration after years of holding multiple activities in different neighborhoods.

The Pitt County Sheriff’s Office, which holds National Night Out events in August, had to cancel this year’s event because of Tropical Storm Debby. It has not been rescheduled.