Chil­dren from east Port of Spain and en­vi­rons laughed, frol­icked and en­joyed good­ies cour­tesy of­fi­cers of the Port of Spain City Po­lice for their sev­enth an­nu­al Christ­mas treat on Sun­day.

The par­ty which is held at the Port of Spain Cen­tral Mar­ket’s city po­lice post has be­come a tra­di­tion for the com­mu­ni­ty at­tract­ing hun­dreds of chil­dren from com­mu­ni­ties like Laven­tille, the Beetham Gar­dens, Sea Lots and as far as Mor­vant.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, WPC Amelia Pierre said the event held a spe­cial place in the hearts of the of­fi­cers who want­ed to make a pos­i­tive im­pact in their com­mu­ni­ty.

The snacks, treats, toys and boun­cy cas­tles were spon­sored through do­na­tions from busi­ness­es in and around Port of Spain.

Pierre said de­spite few­er spon­sors for this year’s treat, she felt the par­ty was a re­sound­ing suc­cess and gave spe­cial thanks to the re­turn­ing donors who tried to con­tribute to the event.

“Com­pared to last year in terms of re­quests, we didn’t get as many re­spons­es to our re­quests, so some of our spon­sors didn’t com­mit again,” she said.

“The few that com­mit­ted to the event made it work.

I want to be­lieve this year things were hard for a lot of peo­ple, but we’re hap­py for the sup­port we re­ceived.”

Pierre added that in ad­di­tion to cor­po­rate spon­sors, ven­dors at the mar­ket where the par­ty is held al­so did their part to do­nate cash and items for the par­ty and thanked them for their gen­eros­i­ty.

“It has been dif­fi­cult for a lot of peo­ple and even peo­ple of lim­it­ed means came out and gave some­thing to go to­wards the event, so that was good to see, ” Pierre said.

The spon­sors for this year’s par­ty were the Aranguez Su­per­mar­ket, Sing Chong Su­per­mar­ket, Bermudez, Kiss with sup­port from Port of Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne.

The of­fi­cers in­volved in plan­ning and or­gan­is­ing the event in­clude Sgts Dwayne John and Selvon Mc­Shine, WPC Amelia Pierre to­geth­er with Snr Supt Glenn Charles of the Port of Spain City Po­lice.

Pierre said the ini­tia­tive was not on­ly a means of giv­ing back to dif­fer­ent neigh­bour­hoods but was al­so a means of build­ing a rap­port with res­i­dents to strength­en ties and com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions.