Collaboration and resources equals success.

That's what the Maria Police Department believes as it continues its Maria Cares initiative I've launched in 2021.

The initiative has led to various partnerships between police and local resources like the Barrio Foodbank.

We spoke to Maria's police chief, Jason Hayes, and Tony Caracciolo from the Barrio Foodbank about how the partnership is helping them fight hunger where it lives.

The CARES initiative stands for collaboration and Resources Equal Success, and this was an initiative that was first started by our former chief, Eric Scott.

The program was created to help us form partnerships and relationships within the community that will benefit the community.

So how we got involved with the food bank was Tony knew about the cares initiative and wanted to form a partnership there and had reached out to Scott.

It was a really simple thing.

In a meeting, one of our board members said, You know what?

If the police department had a emergency food box, if they encounter a family in the course of their work that needs food.

The chief of police liked the idea and that Barilla Police emergency food box program was born.

They folded it into their Maria Cares program.

And less than a month later, we had the program up and going.

It's a special box that's placed in the trunk of the vehicle.

So it comes directly from the food bank and Tony makes sure it's food that can be in the trunk of a cruiser and won't expire.

For food, even cook.

There's all the makings for a spaghetti dinner.

Pasta and pasta sauce.

There's beans, there's rice, there's soup, there's peanut butter.

There's other pastas.

There's a couple of cans of veggies.

There may be some chili, just enough to get people through a couple of days till they can come to the food bank.

And for people who who cannot cook their food, there's open at eat Chef Boyardee and juices and Vienna sausages, breakfast cereal sandwiches and things like that.

It's beneficial for the officers to carry the food because we might reach people that might not be able to make it to the food bank or might not know about the food families that we might respond to a call for service at their house.

And we noticed that there might not be food in the cupboards, or sometimes we'll have welfare checks where people will say, hey, go check on that family.

I think they don't have much food.

It helps people on the spot who need it immediately.

And it puts that help in the hands of people who are most likely to encounter people who need help immediately.

I'm not going to encounter somebody at two in the morning with a family crisis that needs food, but the police are.

And so we've made it so they can act immediately without thinking about it at all.

Just do it.

The important thing to us is that we're no longer satisfied to be a food bank that waits for hunger to come to us.

We want to find ways to reach into our community, find hunger where it lives and do something about it.

And the police are partners in this barrio.

Maria Faith Community Outreach.

The organization running the food bank also partnered with police to administer the Frank Gailey Fund.

That find offers lodging and transportation to people in crisis situations.