A back-to-school fundraising program, which has been running for the past seven years in New Britain, ran into some conflict this year due to tensions between community members and police. The co-founder of Training and Motivation Center, Timothy Conaway, verified the organization’s longstanding partnership with the New Britain Police Department. The incident in question unfolded recently when a store manager of the New Britain Target denied both Conaway and the NBPD officers use of the store for their fundraising efforts.
This annual back-to-school drive, the “Stuff a Cruiser” event, is intended to generate donations for school supplies for the children of the community. However, the Target store manager on duty that day refused to cooperate with the event. The manager stated that he did not support police as he kicked the officers and organization coordinators out of the store during their attempted set-up for the drive. Conaway relays the fact that both he and his officers were absolutely shocked that they were being asked to leave. They complied and did not cause a scene, but the mayor of New Britain heard about the incident anyway. Erin Stewart sent out a statement on Twitter on August 11 to address her concern. The tweet reads, “So our @newbritainpd was trying to do their annual back to school supply drive and the @Target manager told them to leave because he doesn’t support the police. Anyone want to make a donation? #newbritain #comeonmana #itsforthekids.”
The first response to her twitter statement came from New Britain’s Fire Chief Raul Ortiz. “I’ll donate. That is unbelievable. Isn’t community policing and involvement what we want more of? Our NBPD has been exceptional in that aspect.” Mayor Erin Stewart tweeted a second time, less than an hour later, to confirm that the regional manager of the New Britain Target had called to make a personal donation of $500 to the “Stuff a Cruiser” drive and apologize. He also invited the event to return to the store at a later date. On August 12, Target’s corporate headquarters addressed the incident over Twitter as well, referencing their long and positive history with the New Britain community in an apology. They also pledged an additional donation of school supplies to the event and stated that they had spoken with the New Britain Police Department to verify their return to the store.
Corporate Target deemed the entire incident a “misunderstanding” and claimed in a statement to The Police Tribune, dated August 14, that the manager had not been informed of the event taking place that day. They also firmly denied that the manager had ever verbally expressed a lack of support for police during the exchange. At the end of the day, the incident did distract from the supportive community fundraiser, but it did not end up hindering the organization’s ability to accept donations. The event was rescheduled. Spiral notebooks, lunchboxes, watercolor paints, loose leaf paper, glue sticks, locker accessories, subject dividers, 3-ring binders, graphing calculators, highlighters, backpacks, and index cards are among the types of school supplies that this fundraiser and others like it seek out in terms of donations.
