Yonkers Police PBA launches mobile canteen to serve community, confront stigma

The Yonkers Police Benevolent Association (PBA) launched its mobile canteen Thursday at Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy on Locust Hill Avenue. The initiative is the latest in a series of programs that the union has run over the years aimed at fostering positive relationships between officers and members of the community.

“I often say that people see police sometimes when they’re at their worst,” said city of Yonkers police commissioner Christopher Sapienza. “And we don’t want to only see people under bad circumstances. We want to see people when we can do something positive.”

According to Sapienza, the police department has dedicated time to toy giveaways during the holidays, its “Coffee with a Cop” events and over 40 programs that work with Yonkers’ youth over the years. But the PBA’s mobile canteen is “unique.”

“The PBA did this on their own,” Sapienza said. “They took the initiative to buy this truck just for the purpose of interacting with the community, which is a fantastic thing.”

The canteen will operate much like a food truck; in difficult situations, like natural disasters or officer funerals, the canteen can “rapidly show up and participate in the event for some type of relief,” said Yonkers mayor Mike Spano, who attended the canteen’s launch.

The mobile canteen is not exclusively for providing relief, though.

“That’s the beauty of the PBA,” Spano said. “That’s the beauty of our police department. They are here to protect, to serve. But they also want to make sure that, if there’s an interaction with the public, it’s not always on the negative side.”

The canteen will help the PBA take the positive activities they already have in place — like summer barbecues and ice cream giveaways — on the road.

“The problem with doing those events is our members are volunteers,” said Frank McDonald, president of the Yonkers PBA. “They volunteer their cars, their time.”

“We’ve been doing these events,” McDonald continued, “And they get a little larger and a little more difficult each year trying to find volunteers with trucks.”

In order to facilitate and expand their service efforts, PBA members used their money to purchase the truck. According to McDonald, they were inspired to start a mobile canteen by the police and fire unions that showed up with their canteens to a fallen officer’s funeral about a year-and-a-half ago.

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Yonkers PBA canteen serves more than food

The PBA’s mobile canteen has a powerful greater purpose.

“What we’re looking for,” McDonald said, “for today’s event, and all of our events moving forward, is — most people, when they see the cops, they only see the cops when (they’re) having a bad day, when things are going wrong.”

“That’s only a small portion of who we are,” McDonald continued. “The other portion is, we are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. (The canteen) allows the community to see another portion of who we are.”

Aiden Faris, seventh grade student at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy, agreed.

“Getting to know (the officers) is a little bit easier because they’re giving back to the community, which not a lot of people do,” Faris said. “Them doing this, it means a lot, and it goes a long way.”

Minister Autumn Edwards, retired Yonkers police officer and long-time PBA volunteer, who attended Thursday’s event to bless the canteen, made a similar observation.

“We know that there’s a lot of negative stigma in between the cops and the community,” Edwards said. “Here, we’re so blessed that the relationship is not what you see on the news. It’s not a fractured relationship, it’s a holistic relationship.”

“I want this to begin to shift that narrative,” Edwards continued. “Not just in the city of Yonkers, but worldwide. I don’t want kids to be standoffish when they see police officers. I want us to be people who they gravitate towards instead of run from.”

Edwards said she hopes the new mobile canteen will be received like an ice cream truck.

“No matter whether or not you’re having a good day or a bad day,” Edwards said, “the ice cream truck can turn things around.”

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers NY Police PBA launches mobile canteen to serve community