Cops’ snowball fight with kids is exactly how to build relationships

With all the unfair attention police get these days, this video is nice to see on several levels. Take a look at North Bergen police officers challenging local kids in a playground to an epic snowball battle. As the officer explains in the video, they even gave up the highground advantage to the kids.

The initial Instagram post drew 16,000 views but because of all the media outlets picking up the story and all the shares, this video has been seen close to 1 million times. They weren't the only officers having snow snow day fun. There were also some female officers practicing some sledding with a girl.

North Bergen Police Captain Arthur Del says these are not publicity stunts. He says their department does things like this every day but this time someone happened to record it.

This is nice because it's simply a fun video to watch and a fun thing for the officers to have done with the kids of course. But it's also so darn smart for police departments to do things like this. The biggest wedge between youth and police in a given community is when youth see cops as only a uniform. Things like this allows them to see them as human beings. It also allows them to start talking with them, learning about them, maybe finding out things like this one officer over there has a son my own age who goes to my school. It's hard to look upon police officers with an 'us and them' mentality when you start seeing the human side.

Police departments not doing this type of community policing could learn a lesson from North Bergen. And I bet the kids are hoping for one more snow day and a rematch!