It’s early Sunday morning Jan. 21 and a group of children have filled a room at the Macungie Institute ready to paint a picture.

Many have their hands up waiting to get paint for their palette. They are doing their best to get Cpl. Michael Mullen’s attention so they can be next.

This may not be Mullen’s normal shift work, but it is an important one, something he looks forward to doing every year.

“It’s fun. How do you have a bad day with a room filled with kids painting? It’s fantastic! It’s good for the community. It brings everyone into this facility together. It’s great. Angela (Faidley) is great with her art studio. It’s really good for everyone,” Mullen explained.

Angela is Angela Faidley, owner of Out of our Minds Art Studio, who provided all the canvasses and paint for this event. She has been doing this for years, and with a cap of 24 children and a waiting list, this has become one of the most popular children-based events in Macungie.

Faidley recalled the early days of Painting with Police with The Press. “It goes back a long ways. There was an officer that put down on Facebook they were doing ‘Coffee with a Cop.’ And so I thought, hmmm. I wrote to him about doing a ‘Painting with the Police.’ So that’s how it all started. We’ve been doing it every year since. It’s been a lot of years.”

The paintings always have a police-theme, such as a close-up of an officer or a K-9 driving a patrol car.

Melissa Stefan brought her children, Mackenzie and Maci, to the Macungie Institute to be part of this event. She has participated in previous events organized by Faidley, always having a great time. As for this specific one, she explained her children were very excited about the prospect of doing something fun with police officers.

“I think it’s great to get the kids of Macungie involved with the local police department. They get to know the officers by their names. All the officers, my kids know them by their names and it’s really neat,” she said.

For Officer Matthew Miklich, who decided to take a seat and make his own painting, having a youth-centered event with different facets of the community participating is important. Reflecting on how the morning was going, he said, “I enjoy seeing all the kids happy. See the smiling faces, the concentration and it’s something fun that we can to come do, on the other side of the other stuff we need to do but we really don’t want to.

“It’s my first year and I look forward to doing it again,” Miklich said.

According to Mullen, in pre-COVID-19 days, the Macungie Police Department had a strong presence in community events. With a return to normalcy, chances are, you will see a friend in blue participating throughout the year in the borough’s activities, as well as get-togethers like “Coffee with a Cop.”

As for the importance of the police to specifically participate in youth-based events, Mullen believes strongly it is a key relationship which cannot be overlooked.

“It’s very important because they get to know us now before society or growing-up can jade them. It lets the kids know that we can be a positive influence on them and they can come to us.”

So, what about the children this event was organized around?

For Anthony Bednarek, it was a fun morning and he was very excited to meet police officers.

“Policemen catch bad guys who rob banks,” he said. He wants to be a police officer when he grows up.

He was not the only one that morning who told The Press about aspirations in law enforcement.

“I like police officers because I want to be one when I grow up,” Olivia Balseiro explained. She also had a lot of fun painting that morning with her friends.