Police report: Relevant news sent with love

By Cindy Safronoff

This summer as an extra feature of our “Compass the City” Monitor outreach program, we include Police Departments as one of several direct mail projects. Police in particular are often on our thought because the main Bothell office for the CS Literature Joint Distribution Committee is very close to the Bothell Police station.

We created a mailing list of all Police stations in the Seattle region, and mailed three sample copies of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly news magazine with a cover letter offering them a free gift subscription. All the sample copies also had a sticker (where the mailing address normally goes) also offering a free gift subscription.

We had enough extra issues left over after our outreach to retail businesses in commercial areas and from our regular mailings of used copies to jails and prisons (local church members bring us their used copies to re-distribute) to be able to select from a wide variety of issues. We sent them issues most likely to be of special interest to them, with feature topics relevant to their work.

We sent them all the two issues on why people carry guns, and the roots of violence (top row). For the third sample copy, we sent one of these three (lower row): on police reform, crime prevention, or new police leadership in Boston.

Whether or not they take us up on our offer for a free gift subscription, we hope someone at each police station will at least peruse one or more of these issues. And if nothing else, we have exposed them to the name “The Christian Science Monitor Weekly”.