Statesboro Police Officers Foundation supporters hope to make its first Barbecue Cookoff a major event from the get-go, enlisting teams of First Responders, Backyard Barbecue Heroes and Restaurant Style BBQ chefs to compete for prizes May 20-21 and draw a crowd to the Kiwanis Ogeechee Fairgrounds.
Yes, that’s almost two months away at this writing, but the foundation is accepting cooking team entries now through its website, www.statesboropolice.org.
“You know we do shooting matches right now as a fundraiser, but we wanted to do a large event that was a little bit different, and so we decided to do a barbecue competition,” said Brannen Smith, the foundation’s president. “We figured, you know, barbecue brings a lot of people together.”
The competition’s judges will award cooking teams first, second and third prizes in each of four meat categories for grilling or smoking: ribs, chicken, brisket and Boston butt. The entry fee for a team competing in one meat category is $125, but the fee for each additional meat category is $25.
Grand champion and reserve grand champion status will also be awarded in each of the three team divisions. For the purposes of the contest, “First Responder” division teams will consist of law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics or other public safety personnel. “Backyard Barbecue Heroes” are civilians who enjoy grilling barbecue at home, of course, and the “Restaurant Style” category will give actual restaurants an opportunity to showcase their approach to barbecue, Smith explained.
To be considered for the grand prizes a team must enter in all four meat categories, and thus pay entry fees totaling $200.
Additionally, “extra class” prizes will be awarded for best sauces and desserts, with a $20 entry fee for each, or $40 for both the sauce and the dessert competitions.
“We’re hoping to get about 40 to 45 teams out there if we can, and then we’re going to have live entertainment, bouncy houses, first-responder vehicles from the sheriff’s department, police department, ambulance, fire truck,” Smith said. “We want to make it a very big, family-friendly event, so people can bring their kids out there.”
Organizers hope also to recruit some food trucks so that barbecued meats and dessert items will not be the only food available.
“The whole purpose is, one, to make it family-friend, and two, it’s an opportunity for the public to interact with our local law enforcement and other area first responders and get to know those men and women a little bit better,” he said.
When the event weekend arrives, Friday, May 20, and Saturday, May 21, the public will be asked to pay $5 per adult or older teen to enter, but children under age 16 will be admitted free. Cooking teams are slated to begin setting up at noon that Friday but to begin cooking after a team meeting at 5 p.m. All of the judging will be done on Saturday, with the meat categories facing deadlines into the afternoon, brisket last.
Backs the SPD Blue
The Statesboro Police Officers Foundation is dedicated to supporting the Statesboro Police Department’s officers and their families and supplementing the department’s equipment and training. Proceeds from the Barbecue Cookoff will go to continue that mission, said Smith, who is a community banker at Morris Bank.
In May 2021, the foundation awarded its first round of Ty Cobler Memorial Scholarships to four young adults with parents employed by the department. Cobler, who owned and operated the independent sporting goods store TC Outdoors for a decade, was one of the foundation’s founding members and most enthusiastic leaders before his untimely death in February 2020. The scholarship program, for which supporters hoped to raise about $5,000 a year, is just one example of the foundation’s activities.
For their largest project so far, the Statesboro Police Officers Foundation and the Bulloch County Sheriff's Foundation teamed up to build the agencies’ shared Public Safety Training Building at the firearms practice range near the Sheriff’s Office.
Dedicated in February 2020, the training building was constructed using $56,000 in cash donations and more than $207,000 of donor in-kind goods and services at no cost to the departments. By spring 2021, it had been used by personnel from more than two dozen public safety agencies.
The Police Officers Foundation previously partnered with Statesboro’s city government to provide all SPD line officers hardened body armor for active-shooter situations. The foundation also purchased Mono (pronounced "Mow-Know"), a Labrador retriever trained in narcotics detection, and donated him to the department’s K9 force, where he is one of two active drug dogs.
More recently, the foundation bought and helped package individual first aid kits for all of the officers to have on their persons and in their cars.
In the past, the organization mainly relied on fundraising appeals for specific projects or short-term needs.
“This is kind of our first true effort to do something on an annual basis that can help us develop a budget,” Smith said. “In the past we’ve done $15,000 or $20,000 a year, probably, on average.”
Assistance fund
But the foundation has also been putting money aside each year in an Officer Assistance Account to prepare for possibilities nobody wants to think about, he said.
“If we have tragedy here where an officer is killed in the line of duty, we’ve got a process, a fund set aside where, within 48 hours, we’re financially helping the family,” Smith said.
The foundation also assisted the family of Capt. Kaleb Moore with transportation to a Savannah hospital after he was severely injured in a crash while riding his patrol motorcycle in March 2021. Moore recovered and has since returned to duty.
The organization previously assisted another officer who had a serious medical condition and has hosted events for officers and their families, noted SPD Deputy Chief Robert W. “Rob” Bryan, who serves as departmental liaison to the foundation.
“The list goes on. It’s hard to think of everything that they’ve touched since they’ve been in existence. …,” Bryan said. “I think the great thing is, it shows how this community truly supports its law enforcement officers.”
Neither he nor any other officers are voting members of the foundation board, which consists of local business and professional people serving as volunteers. The foundation’s 2022 corporate partners include Bulloch Solutions, the Hall & Navarro law firm, Hawk Construction LLC, Morris Bank, Queensborough National Bank & Trust, Rotary International and TC Outdoors.
The shooting competitions Smith mentioned are being held monthly this year, also as foundation fundraisers, at the law enforcement firearms range. These are being scored as a series, with a culminating event slated for December.