Hampton police are letting both their hair and their giving spirit grow out this holiday season as they once again participate in multiple holiday charity efforts, including the No Shave and Presents from Police campaigns.
For the fourth annual No Shave campaign, Hampton officers including Patrolman Ben Brown are growing out their beards and donating the money they would otherwise use for shaving supplies to the Mrs. Claus Club Pittsburgh North Chapter.
“Our policy is clean-shaven, but we are allowed to have a mustache,” Brown said. “Years past, a lot of us would grow out a mustache for (No-Shave) November, and that kind of transitioned to, hey, maybe we could raise some money to give back to local groups in the community.”
In previous years, what started as No Shave November expanded into Don’t Stop December, January and February, warranting this year’s campaign to simply be called “No Shave Campaign.”
“In November, we were able to get a decent amount of people donating,” Brown said. “But then it’s like, well, we could push this through the holidays, and we ended up donating to others within the community. We usually try to figure out if there’s a specific local charity that’s going on, and it just kind of allows us to raise a little bit more money.”
For now, the police haven’t yet picked another charity beyond the Mrs. Claus Club, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to comforting and supporting local community members who are undergoing cancer treatment by providing them with comfort baskets. According to the club’s website, its basic goal is to make sure cancer patients “realize they are not alone and to provide some sense of normalcy during this difficult time, even if only cosmetic.”
In addition to the No Shave campaign, the Hampton police force is participating in the Presents from Police toy drive spearheaded by the Aspinwall Police Department. The drive will provide gifts to youngsters at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Sunrise School in Monroeville and the Children’s Institute in Shadyside.
“We collect presents here and at our community center, and in about two weeks now, we’ll be heading down and we’ll meet up with (Aspinwall police), along with many, many other agencies in the area to deliver those presents,” Brown said. “It’s nice to get together and be able to do something like that, give back.”
Besides these two campaigns, Brown said the Hampton police social workers, led by Angela Kenbok, set up a holiday sponsorship program to aid community members on the social workers’ caseloads, “people in the community that could use the help.”
“Staff members between the management office and the police department actually sponsor families to essentially give them an entire Christmas morning that they don’t have to worry about,” Brown said.
The police social workers also set up a Giving Tree at the Hampton Community Center that allowed any member of the community to come in and choose an ornament off the tree to sponsor a child or family for this holiday season.
“Each ornament had a person’s specific name on it. People could essentially just come in, they take an ornament — that’s them accepting, ‘I’m gonna get a gift for this individual,’ and from there, they get the gift, they bring it and drop it off with our social services,” Brown said. “They’ll ride with us, and we’ll deliver the presents in the cop cars to people in the community that could really use the help.”