The Saint John Police Force headquarters, located at One Peel Plaza. (Staff photo)
The Saint John Police Force is collecting gently used winter boots for school children.
Spokesperson Jim Hennessy says the boot drive aims to collect as many boots as possible before the weather gets really bad.
“I’ve got two grown children so there’s always boots that they outgrow and they kind of get pushed to the back (of the closet) and you forget about them. We’d just like to remind everybody to have a look around the house, and if there are some gently used boots that will fit someone between the ages of five and ten, we’d love to have them,” he said.
Hennessy says with winter soon upon us, it’s time to break out winter boots, whether we like it or not.
“We’ve all sat somewhere for an extended period of time with wet feet, and it’s just no good. The children especially, it’s so easy and fast for their feet to get cold, so if we can get some boots on as many feet as we can, I think that’s going to be a great thing,” he said.
Hennessy says the drive is being done in conjunction with P.A.L.S.
“With the amount of people that we do have coming through our lobby every day, we just thought maybe we can help out in some way and try to get as many children with something warm for their feet for the winter months,” he said.
Hennessy says there is a bin set up in the station’s lobby uptown. Boots can be dropped off Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The boot bin has its first offering. Thank you! We are collecting gently used boots for children ages 5-10 in conjunction with PALS.
Can be dropped off Mon-Fri 8:30am-4:30pm. pic.twitter.com/3eE5RtCdWc
— Saint John Police (@saintjohnpolice) November 27, 2019
He says there’s no hard deadline on when they’ll stop collecting boots, but likely around the third week of December, as the snow starts to pile up.
