The Bowling Green Police Department has created a new public outreach program after the U.S. Department of Justice awarded a $500,000 Community Oriented Policing Services Grant.

BGPD Sgt. Brad Hogue is overseeing the community engagement team.

He said the grant has allowed the creation of four positions, including his and two full-time Community Resource officer positions. 

Hogue said the program has four main objectives – mentoring, community projects and partnerships, legitimacy and recruiting and retention.

“They’re gonna find out ways they can make a difference,” Hogue said. “Part of that is going to be educating people like safety programs, ways to be safe in the community, driver safety – things that fall in line with our mission and values here at the police department.”

Several events have already taken place. Recently, the program conducted a “Popsicle Patrol,” handing out frozen treats and bottled water as residents of Bowling Green battle high temperatures.

Hogue also said the program will send BGPD representatives into areas of town where residents do not often interact with law enforcement.

“It’s also an opportunity to go in and show people that we’re not any different,” Hogue said. “We’re still people with goals.”

The two CSOs in the program are officers Andrew Kilbourne and Amber Kae Bowman. Bowman said that before filling the CSO positions, both of them were on patrol duty and worked with the department’s advanced crime scene unit.

She said they recognized the need for the community outreach positions.

“When they put that assignment out, we were both really thrilled to be able to continue being involved in the community as we were, but even more in depth with the new positions,” Bowman said.

Though Kilbourne and Bowman will still work with the advanced crime scene unit as needed, their main roles now are as CSOs.

Kilbourne, who previously patrolled on night duty, said he’s enjoying the new assignment.

“The smiling faces in the sunlight are really different,” he said. “But I’m enjoying it so far.”

He said because the program is in its beginning phases, there is a lot of “trying to feel out” how much outreach work they can do during the week.

“It’s still really early stages, so we still have to implement a lot of things, but I can say we both have pretty busy schedules coming up,” Kilbourne said.

On a recent Friday, representatives of the program visited HOTEL Inc. in Bowling Green to read to children. They will also be present at several upcoming weekend concerts at Circus Square Park, with games and small giveaway items available to visitors.

Bowman summed up the program as a way of showing another side of BGPD, saying many are not used to police doing these types of events.

“They’re used to seeing the normal police duties,” she said. “We get a call, we respond to someone having a bad day, we take care of the issue. We want to show a different side of the police and show that we really care about the community.”