Practicing lawn enforcement
Apopka police chief, mayor help cut grass for city’s needy
Apopka Police Chief Mike McKinley isn’t usually worried about this kind of grass.
But for the past several weeks, the chief has been mowing lawns in the Apopka area along with officers Justin Lemieux, Matt Reinhardt and others, including Mayor Bryan Nelson.
Their free off-duty, lawn-mowing service is part of a community policing effort inspired by Rodney Smith Jr., founder of Alabama-based Raising Men/Women Lawn Care Service.
Smith, 28, who visited Apopka to mow lawns Wednesday and promote his “50-yard” challenge, tours the country, providing free yard work to older adults, disabled persons, single moms, veterans and others in need while encouraging youths to do the same in their communities. Kids who take up the challenge can earn T-shirts, mowers and trimmers.
About 500 kids have accepted the challenge, 30 have finished it.
Promoted on Twitter, Smith’s pitch caught the attention of Lemieux, who has worked in law enforcement since 1996, the last three years in Apopka.
Lemieux said Smith’s message connected with him because it reaffirmed a fundamental truth he learned early in his police career: “You can’t do this job alone.”
Newly assigned to serve as school resource officer at Apopka Middle, Lemieux, 47, recruited fellow Apopka officers to help him cut grass on their off days, which they began doing about five weeks ago. But he was encouraged when the police chief and mayor signed up to push mowers, pull weeds, trim hedges and edge sidewalks, too.
“They went out there in the dead of the heat,” he said. “You can’t measure that kind of support.” Apopka police have cut two dozen lawns so far. As word has spread, Lemieux’s legion of volunteers got requests from people from south Apopka to Rock Springs Reserve.
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Tarriyah Baker, 20, after Smith and Lemieux led an entourage of Apopka police to mow and weed whack her mother’s yard on Eighth Street, south of Main Street and Apopka City Hall. “It’s a great chance for the police and the community to really build a bond together. People feel like they can trust the police.”
When police show up in south Apopka, it often means there’s been trouble.
A neighbor, Jose Nunez, wandered over to see why police and a clot of TV reporters were swarming two doors down.
Told about the lawn-mowing challenge, he ex
“They went out there in the dead of the heat. You can’t measure that kind of support.”
Justin Lemieux, school resource officer at Apopka Middle
pressed relief. “Oh, I thought it was for something else,” Nunez said.
McKinley, 57, said trimming the lawn can help cut neighborhood crime, too, saying communities that appear to be cared for are less likely to attract trouble.
He said he hires a lawn service to cut the grass at his home in Apopka.
Before he joined Smith’s lawn-mowing challenge, Nelson said he hadn’t cut a lawn since he was elected to the Legislature in 2006, although his family is best known for its green-thumb Apopka business, Nelson & Sons’ Florida Roses.
“It was humbling,” he recalled of his day pushing a mower.
He said the work was harder than he expected partly because he finished three lawns before discovering the mower he was pushing through 8-inch-high grass had a self-propel function.
Nelson said the work also has been rewarding.
Among the residents he helped was a grandmother with a disabled grandchild. The grass in the backyard was a foot high but the yard had no access for Nelson’s mower.
“We had to literally carry the mower through the house to the backyard….” he said.
Smith said he was a senior at Alabama A&M when he first volunteered to mow an elderly man’s lawn who was struggling behind a push mower.
Since then, he’s cut lawns for free in all 50 states, relying on the support of people who follow his mission on social media sites.
Trish Tamm, 50, of Longwood, who has followed Smith on Facebook for two years, showed up Wednesday in Apopka with her daughter Jayne to give him $200.
“He’s not doing it for the publicity. God knows, he’s not doing it for the money,” Tamm said.
“You can tell he wants to make a difference. In life, you want to make a difference.”
Smith, who is taking his help-your-neighbor message across the country, picked Apopka because its police department was the first to accept his 50-yard challenge. He brought along a mower he painted black and white and fitted it with working police lights.