Setting Off From New North Pole, Shop With a Cop Returns Tonight, Lights Ablaze and Sirens Blaring

Tonight’s the night when the Walmart parking lot will be ablaze with the emergency lights of dozens of cop cars as they converge on the store with 119 children aboard for the annual Shop With a Cop event.

They’ll be setting off from a new North Pole–Sheriff Rick Staly’s own Christmas present of sorts: the $21 million Sheriff’s Operations Center off Commerce Boulevard, set officially to open later this month.




The cop-shepherded shopping spree with needy children has been a Flagler County tradition since now-retired Sheriff’s Sgt. Larry Jones created Christmas With a Deputy 15 years ago, and continued it until 2020.

Differences (and perhaps a little rancor) between the Sheriff’s Office and Jones ended that relationship in January 2021 when the sheriff removed all agency involvement in the non-profit and launched a similar initiative with a different name. The change was in part to secularize the event, and to dispel the impression that only deputies participated: all children of any faith, or no faith, participate, as do cops from Bunnell, Flagler Beach, the Florida Highway Patrol, and sometimes others.

Shop With A Cop is a popular concept with law enforcement agencies across the country. It is now part of the mission of the Flagler Sheriff’s Children’s Charities, and is supported by sheriff’s employees, local businesses and community sponsors.

Sheriff’s employees contribute to the program through payroll deductions. That helped raise over $18,000 this year. With additional donations, the program is underwriting the $200 gift cards for each of the 119 children participating tonight, up from $175 last year: inflation is garlanding Christmas. The children are selected with the help of the school district and sheriff’s employees, with a focus on poorer families, victims of domestic violence or children in foster care.

In previous years, the children first gathered at the offices of the Chiumento law firm in Town Center, from where a caravan of cop cars would go to Target. The convoy would often generate panicked phone calls to 911 or to news media as residents wondered what the emergency was. The relationship with Target, too, ended last December over what Target described as “miscommunication,” and what the sheriff described as company officials “talking out of both sides of their mouths.”




This evening, participating law enforcement officers will round up children in their cop cars–a thrill for the children–and drive them to the parking lot of the new Sheriff’s Operations Center to play games and participate in other holiday activities. (The building itself is still a maze of punch lists.) The children and deputies will then travel to Walmart, escorted by agency’s Motors Unit.

Hot dogs and hamburgers will follow the event. “I’m very proud of our FCSO employees who are willing to donate their hard-earned money to this very special event every year,” Staly said. “I’d like to extend an additional thank you to Dan Newlin Injury Attorneys, Joe Vece, AMVETS, and other community members who’ve generously donated to this year’s Shop with a Cop event. I encourage members of our community to support Flagler Sheriff’s Children’s Charities by making a tax-deductible donation. Our team is very excited about the upcoming event, and we are looking forward to watching the children get into the holiday spirit.”