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SWAT Blood Drive
September 23, 2008 |
Cape Coral Police Officer Matt Hoffman recently hopped out of his police cruiser
and into the Lee Memorial Bloodmobile. “It’s a pretty easy thing to do compared
to some of the other stuff we go through. This is pretty easy and you know
there’s a great need for blood,” he says.
A handful of Southwest Florida law enforcement agencies are joining Matt in
donating blood. The Lee Memorial SWAT Team challenge lets agencies compete to
see which department can donate the most. “It’s like anything else where there’s
a challenge in it, it’s like we can do better than that department. We’ll have
more people come out and it’s kind of like the prestige for a year. We’re the
number one police department that has the most units,” says Joyce Slaughter with
Lee Memorial Blood Center.
But officers and community members are encouraged to donate for reasons other
than a shiny trophy. This time around the SWAT Team challenge is dedicated to
Fort Myers police officer Andrew Widman who was killed in the line of duty just
a few months ago. Joyce says, “We went to his family and got permission to
dedicate the force SWAT Team Challenge Drives in his honor and so far we’ve had
three teams that have had their drives and to date we have collected 122 units.
We invite the public to come out and help us out this is one more thing they can
do in Officer Widman’s memory.” Officer Hoffman says, “Hopefully that will get
more people to come out, you know the tragedy of what happened. Like I say,
whatever it takes to inspire people to come out and fill the need.”
The last winner of the SWAT Team challenge was Cape Coral Police with 55 units
of donated blood |
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