While it is not unordinary to see police cars monitoring traffic, it is unusual to see cops pulling over people for practicing good driving habits.
The Lima Police Department and the Department of Community Development partnered up Tuesday in order to reward drivers with special holiday gifts.
Sergeant Aaron Rode of the Lima Police Department spent his lunch break pulling over safe drivers to hand them specially wrapped gifts in order to thank them for following the rules of the road.
"Doing events like this is important to me because it does shed a nice light on the police department. Not everyone has a positive interaction with the police department, hopefully, events like this are that positive interaction," said Rode.
The gifts were donated by several local sponsors such as Fat Jack's Pizza, Rhodes State College, and Quick as a Wink.
"It'll be great to see the reactions on their faces, hopefully, there are some kids in the car, we got some goodies for them as well," stated Rode. "I think the end goal is to have a positive influence on those that we stop and talk to today and to let them know that not just the police department is behind them, but also the Lima community as a whole."
Residents that were pulled over were indeed surprised, but their original fear of being pulled over quickly went away when they see that they were getting gifts and not a ticket.
"I was very surprised," said Chyna Elliott, a Lima resident. "Thank you very much, we appreciate it and all that you do."
"We were actually on our way to practice, and we were like 'Oh god... great.' " said Jelena Lopicic, an UNOH student. "Thank you very much."
