Law enforcement agencies unite for a basketball tournament
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Police Departments around the Golden Triangle unite together.
The Starkville Police Department hosted a “Hooping with First Responders” event at the Starkville Sportsplex.
Law enforcement agencies around the Golden Triangle from Columbus, Starkville, MSU, and West Point all huddled up to participate in the “Hooping with First Responders” event.
It was a single-elimination basketball tournament for the surrounding agencies.
Kenya Bibbs is an officer for the Starkville Police Department and the host of the tournament.
She said the goal was to connect with not only the city of Starkville but communities around the Golden Triangle.
“We like to have fun too and we like to do things that they like to do so we wanted them to start coming out and joining us in extracurricular activities that we do on our downtime to show that we take care of business and we also want to build a relationship with them,” Bibbs said.
The last appearance of the event was in 2022.
Bibbs said events like this also help police departments unite together to protect and serve.
“Hopefully one day this thing will get even bigger. We get other agencies to come and join us as well and to show that we are family even though we wear a different patches that we still are family,” Bibbs said. “It’s still all about protecting and serving our community, no matter what agency that we’re at.”
Starkville PD officer Chris English said it is good to bond with the community outside of the uniform.
“At the end of the day we are all human so kind of having that human approach a lot of people that’s come out to watch us seen us outside of uniform, playing basketball,” English said. “Some of us air-balling laughing about it. Just showing the community that we humans as well and we like to have a good time and play ball.”
Bibbs said she wants the tournament to be an annual event for the community.
The Starkville Police Department will host their National Night Out on August 6.
