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Garland Police Association Garland Police Association is a member driven organization.

We strive to have the best working environment for employees, fight for better benefits, and also provide legal coverage to our members through TMPA.

National Coffee with a Cop Day started with a simple problem. Most people only ever met the police on the worst day of t...
10/07/2026

National Coffee with a Cop Day started with a simple problem. Most people only ever met the police on the worst day of their week.

In 2011, Chief Keith Kauffman and John Dixon of the Hawthorne Police Department in California tried something different. They set up at a local coffee shop, with no agenda and no speeches, and let residents walk up and ask whatever they wanted. By 2016 the idea had spread to all 50 states.

It is now held on the first Wednesday of October every year, which this year is October 7.

The format has not changed, because it does not need to. A table, a cup of coffee, and time to talk about the things that never come up during a call. Parking. School traffic. Why the sirens were out on Tuesday night.

Members of this association know the most useful conversations rarely happen in an emergency.

In 1917, an Army captain named Robert Queisser designed a small flag for a window.He had two sons serving overseas. The ...
09/27/2026

In 1917, an Army captain named Robert Queisser designed a small flag for a window.

He had two sons serving overseas. The flag he patented carried a blue star for each family member in service, and families across the country began hanging them where neighbors could see. It was a quiet way of saying that someone from this house is out there.

If that person did not come home, the family sewed a gold star over the blue one.

That is where the term comes from. Not a medal. Not a designation handed down by an institution. A mother with a needle, covering a blue star, in a window on an ordinary street. In 1918 the practice was formalized when the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense asked President Wilson to approve a gold star for mothers who had lost a child in the war, and he did.

Gold Star Mother's and Family's Day is observed on the last Sunday in September, this year on the 27th.

Members of this association know Gold Star families in the communities we serve. Most of them will not say so out loud.

If you know one, they do not need a speech. They need to know their person is still remembered by name. Share this post in their honor.

There is a POW/MIA flag flying at your post office right now. Federal law puts it there.The National POW/MIA Flag Act, s...
09/18/2026

There is a POW/MIA flag flying at your post office right now. Federal law puts it there.

The National POW/MIA Flag Act, signed November 7, 2019, changed a rule most people never knew existed. Before it, the flag was required at federal sites on six days a year. Now it must fly on every day the American flag flies. At the Capitol. At the White House. At every national cemetery, every VA medical center, the World War II, Korean War and Vietnam Veterans memorials, and every post office in the country.

It is also the only flag other than the Stars and Stripes ever to fly over the White House.

The design came out of a request from Mrs. Michael Hoff, whose husband was missing in Vietnam, and was adopted by the National League of Families in January 1972. A silhouette, a strand of barbed wire, a watchtower, and four words. You Are Not Forgotten.

More than 80,000 Americans are still unaccounted for from past conflicts.

Members of this association pass that flag most days without looking up. Today is a good day to look.

Share this post in their honor.

When the Air Force became its own branch on September 18, 1947, it did not have a uniform of its own.For years afterward...
09/18/2026

When the Air Force became its own branch on September 18, 1947, it did not have a uniform of its own.

For years afterward its people wore Army olive drab with new insignia. A brand new service, dressed in its old parent's clothes. Air Force Materiel Command's own history calls 1947 through 1954 the transition period. The blue everyone recognizes now had to be invented from scratch.

The falcon came later too. Cadets of the Class of 1959 chose it as the Academy mascot on September 25, 1955, for its speed, power, courage and agility. The Academy still keeps live falcons, cared for by the cadet falconry team.

Seventy nine years on, a service that started out borrowing its clothes flies 4,865 aircraft across the active force, the Air National Guard and the Reserve.

Some of our own members wore that uniform first. They tend to mention it.

Happy birthday to the United States Air Force. Drop a blue heart in the comments if you or someone you love served in it.

This year, for the first time, there will be a seventh moment of silence.At the ceremony marking twenty five years since...
09/11/2026

This year, for the first time, there will be a seventh moment of silence.

At the ceremony marking twenty five years since September 11, 2001, the six moments the country knows will be observed. The two towers struck, the two towers fallen, the Pentagon, and Flight 93. Then, after the reading of the names, a seventh will be added for those who have died of 9/11 related illness. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum has said it will be a permanent part of the ceremony from now on.

It was added because the arithmetic finally demanded it. 2,977 people from 90 nations were killed that day, among them 441 first responders from more than thirty agencies. 343 FDNY members. 37 from the Port Authority Police Department. 23 from the NYPD.

In the years since, more than 400 FDNY members have died of World Trade Center related illness. More than died on the day itself.

Twenty five years is long enough that a generation now learns this as history. It is not history to the people still being buried from it.

Share this post in their honor.

Nobody is entirely sure who invented Labor Day, and the two leading candidates had nearly the same name.The Department o...
09/07/2026

Nobody is entirely sure who invented Labor Day, and the two leading candidates had nearly the same name.

The Department of Labor lays out both cases without picking a winner. Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, is the traditional answer. But the Department notes that recent research seems to support Matthew Maguire, a machinist from Paterson, New Jersey. McGuire and Maguire. A holiday celebrated for more than 140 years, and the credit is still open.

What is settled: the first Labor Day was Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. By the time Congress made it federal on June 28, 1894, thirty one states had already made it a holiday on their own. The country adopted this one from the bottom up.

Today most people get the day. Not everyone does. Our members are working it, along with the nurses, the line crews, the dispatchers, and everyone else whose job does not observe a Monday in September.

There is a persistent myth that asking someone directly whether they are thinking about su***de will put the idea in the...
09/05/2026

There is a persistent myth that asking someone directly whether they are thinking about su***de will put the idea in their head.

The research says the opposite. A review published in Psychological Medicine examined the available studies and found not one showing that asking about suicidal thoughts increased them. The authors concluded that acknowledging and talking about su***de may in fact reduce suicidal ideation.

September is National Su***de Prevention Month, and that finding is the most useful thing anyone can hand you this month, because it removes the reason most people stay quiet.

It matters in this line of work more than most. The CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has reported that law enforcement personnel and firefighters are more likely to die by su***de than in the line of duty.

That makes this a safety issue. This association treats safety issues the way it treats every other one. Out loud.

You do not need a certification to ask a colleague how they are actually doing. You need to ask, and then stay quiet long enough to get the real answer.

Share this post so it reaches someone who has been sitting on that question.

***dePreventionMonth

When a disaster hits, the phone network does not fail evenly. Voice calls go first.Here is why. A phone call holds an op...
09/03/2026

When a disaster hits, the phone network does not fail evenly. Voice calls go first.

Here is why. A phone call holds an open channel for as long as you talk. A text message is a tiny packet that queues, retries, and slips through gaps a call cannot use. That is why the FCC's emergency guidance says plainly that in many cases text messages will go through when your call may not.

The second half of that guidance is the part almost nobody follows. Pick a contact who lives outside your area and make sure everyone in your household knows to check in with that person. When something happens locally, local lines jam. Long distance often still works. Your out of area contact becomes the switchboard while the neighborhood ones are useless.

September is National Preparedness Month. Two things, ten minutes, no shopping required. Agree on the out of area contact, and make sure everyone knows to text rather than call.

Our members work the days these plans get tested. The households that made one are noticeably easier to help.

Comment below with the one preparedness step you have actually done. Not the one you keep meaning to do.

Happy 110th birthday to the Marine Forces Reserve.On August 29, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Naval Appropri...
08/29/2026

Happy 110th birthday to the Marine Forces Reserve.

On August 29, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Naval Appropriations Act, formally establishing the Marine Corps Reserve as World War I loomed and the country began preparing for the possibility of entering it.

Here is the growth curve: in April 1916, the Reserve consisted of 35 Marines. By the time Germany surrendered in November 1918, it had reached 6,467. Reserve Marines fought at Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne.

Today, Marine Forces Reserve is the largest command in the Marine Corps, with roughly 40,000 drilling Selected Reserve Marines across 184 Reserve Training Centers nationwide. They hold civilian careers and stay mission-ready at the same time.

Several members of this association do exactly that. Two commitments. One standard.

Semper Fidelis.

Twenty minutes. That is roughly how long a kid spends walking to school and walking home again, and it is the riskiest p...
08/15/2026

Twenty minutes. That is roughly how long a kid spends walking to school and walking home again, and it is the riskiest part of their entire day.

NHTSA data shows more school-age pedestrians are killed between 6 and 8 in the morning and between 3 and 5 in the afternoon than during any other hours. Two narrow windows, at the exact times when the light is bad, drivers are rushed, and children are the smallest and hardest things on the road to see.

Here is what actually helps. Walk the route with them once before the first day so they know where to cross rather than deciding in the moment. Teach them to make eye contact with a driver before stepping off a curb, because a stopped car is not the same thing as a driver who has seen you. Bright colors on a backpack do more than people think in morning fog. And the phone goes in the pocket until they are through the door.

None of it takes long. All of it works.

Our members will be out on those routes when school starts back up, same as always.

Share this post before Monday morning. Someone on your feed is walking a kid to school for the first time this week.

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