Brainerd Police Officers Hold ‘Coffee with a Cop’ to Educate Community on Scams

At The Center in Brainerd, Thursdays are widely known as Donut Day, where volunteers make and sell doughnuts to help support the senior center. But this Thursday, the Brainerd Police Department visited the facility for “Coffee with a Cop,” an outreach program to ensure citizens remain safe and informed about issues the community may face.

“We’re going to be giving a presentation to members and community members on scam and fraud, kind of talking to them about the things that we’re seeing in the community and common trends, as well as some things and measures they can take to prevent falling victim to scam and fraud,” explained Brainerd police officer Cameron Walkowiak.

Officers spoke on some of the more common scam and fraud cases seen in the area, with the most prevalent being cryptocurrency and catfishing scams.

“If anyone ever asks you to pay in Bitcoin or gift cards, it is 100% a scam, by far,” said Brainerd police officer Jay Personius. “There’s no law enforcement agency in the United States that takes any type of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. No one accepts gift cards. If there’s ever a doubt, is this a scam or not, come to the police department or talk to a sheriff’s office. We can provide the insight and actually try to vet it for you.”

Although the police department commonly works with children during outreach events, there’s no age limit to learning the best practices in keeping people safe digitally and in real life.

“We talk about stranger danger and things like that for kids,” Walkowiak elaborated. “Today, like I said, we’re talking about scam and fraud, and a lot of times that could be more common in different age groups than a wide variety of those ages.”

The outreach events allow the police to not only inform the community but create bonds with them as well.

“It’s important and good for us to get out and build those relationships with our community members and get to talk to more people and meet more people,” continued Walkowiak. “And it’s something that I really enjoyed doing. It’s something I love about my job and whether it’s something, an event like this or going out to schools, doing events like ‘Shop with a Cop,’ and kind of some of those similar events. So, this is one of those that is really fun to be a part of and to be able to meet people in the community.”

Anyone who thinks they are being targeted by scammers can call their police department’s non-emergency line before taking any other actions.