By Corvo Rohwer, Puyallup Tribal News
Puyallup Community Services and volunteers came together to organize National Night Out, an event that promotes positive relations between locals and their police departments.
This year’s event featured youth activities that included bounce houses, waterslides and more alongside the festivities at the Power Paddle to Puyallup Protocol.
Native American rappers Lil Mike and Funny Bone performed and attended a meet and greet after being introduced by Puyallup Tribal Council Vice Chairwoman Sylvia Miller, as well as Council Members James Rideout and Monica Miller.
Puyallup Tribal Police, along with Riverside Fire and Rescue, also attended the event, opening up their equipment for the youth to explore and learn.
Tribal Police also introduced its plan to build a Unity Chain, a paper construction of 1,000 links that aims to bring the community together. Participants write their name on a loop before adding it to the end of the chain to show their support.
Law Enforcement Records Manager Sherry James said they wanted to find ways to interact with the community and unite against crime.
“My hope was that we would create this nucleus of all of us standing together. …We don’t want our community members to be afraid,” James said. “I was hoping it would be a symbol that people would be able to say, ‘Yeah, we don’t tolerate that here.’”
James hopes getting Tribal Police more involved in community events like National Night Out will help cultivate more positive interactions in the future, not just for the youth, but all community members.
“We’re here for them. We’re here to help them feel safe, and if they don’t feel safe or if there’s a disconnect, then we’re not going to have a good working relationship,” James said. “That’s not going to serve this community.”
Having grown up in the Tribe herself, James believes that nurturing a bond between members of the community is integral, and that events like National Night Out are an important bridge between police and the public.
“We are a community-based police department, made up of community members. My grandma’s house was underneath the casino on 29th Street. I grew up there,” James said. “I’ve been around here my whole life, and there’s a lot of us like that here. … We are a Tribal community, with Native American police officers here to serve them.”
While the Unity Chain currently has 209 links, Tribal Police plans to continue attending community events in the hopes they will be able to complete all 1,000 links and present it as a gift to Tribal Council.
“We’re just kind of putting our foot out there. … Maybe they’ll want more interaction with law enforcement, maybe they’ll want more dialogue,” James said.
