VIDEO: Police Officer Takes Students On A Christmas Shopping Spree

CARROLLTON, Al. (WCBI)-Forming strong relationships with the community is important for law enforcement to do their job. Just ask the officers of the Carrollton Police Department.

“It’a not always about writing tickets and taking people to jail,” said CPD Sgt. Jamie Doss.

Giving back to the community is something Sgt. Doss knows all about.

“My mama instilled it in her three kids if you can help someone you do it,” he said.

And that valuable lesson is something that still resonates with the police officer to this day.

On Monday, Doss took six students from a head-start in Pickens County to go Christmas shopping.

“We sponsor six kids and we took them to the Dollar General store here in town and we spent $100 on each kid,” Doss explained.

All of the money spent on the shopping spree came straight out of Doss’s pockets. He saved $25 dollars from all of his pay checks just to make sure he had enough money to fund the spree.

“We started with the most important things first like clothing school supplies, T-shirts, socks and then we went over to the toys,” he said. “The key is they pointed at stuff saying I won’t be if I want that and we loaded everything up in the buggies for them we would like it to happen for them.”

The sergeant said he knows some kids won’t be as fortunate as others this holiday season which is why he wanted to step in and play Santa this year.

“It meant the world to them they see those toys, their eyes just lit up and that made me happy brought joy to me,”said Doss.

After the shopping spree, Doss ate lunch and spent the rest of his day hanging out with the kids.

“I think it’s very very important for the kids to see that we do more than just write tickets and take people to jail,” the sergeant said.

Doss believes simple gestures like these help bring law enforcement and the community together.

“We can’t do our job if the community don’t help,” he explained. “You saw a lot of cases with people coming forward helping you so if the community, if we can get that behind us it makes our job a whole lot easier.”

Sergeant Doss said he plans to do Shop With A Cop again next year, this time he’s hoping to bring even more students along for the shopping spree.