Cops read a brighter future for at-risk kids

Jace Radke

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 | 9:26 a.m.

Metro Police are hoping a new reading program will help Las Vegas children in the classroom while at the same time teaching them that police are here to help.

The new program, called Cops and Kids, was inadvertently started by Sgt. Randy Sutton earlier this month as a result of time he had been volunteering to visit Classroom on Wheels buses and read to preschool children.

"The Classroom on Wheels people wrote a letter to the sheriff thanking me for the time I was putting in," Sutton said. "The sheriff didn't know I had been visiting the COW buses, so he called me in and we talked about it, and now we have this program."

Volunteer officers will visit the city's seven COW buses, which are mobile classrooms designed to provide preschool education to children in low-income neighborhoods. The officers will read to the children and teach them about what police do.

"Many times the only times these kids see us is when we are taking their parents or someone else to jail," Sutton said. "This gives us a chance to interact with them and let them see us as something other than an enemy."

The program kicked off today at the Las Vegas Housing Authority's Sherman Gardens apartment complex at 1701 N. J St.

American Medical Response has donated $5,000 to the program to go toward purchasing books for the children.

"We are going to use that to buy preschool books for these kids," Sutton said. "After we read to them we'll have the books all wrapped up and we'll give them out."

Books for the program can also be donated at any of the five Metro substations.