Washington Police and Fire Services is gearing up for its annual NFL weekend — a series of events that just keeps expanding, along with community goodwill.

The first few seasons featured autograph sessions and a free football skills camp, led by the pros and learned by the locals; next came a basketball skills camp and exhibition basketball game pitting athletes against law enforcement. This year, the program has broken from its weekend boundaries to encompass the entire week, as cohosts Washington Police and Fire Services and former NFL wide receive and Washington native Terrance Copper have tacked on free dinner for kids Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at a rotation of Washington restaurants: Pizza Inn, Zaxby’s, HWY 55 and East Coast Wings from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight.

Adding dinner to the menu of events serves several purposes, Copper said: drumming up enthusiasm for the weekend camps, while giving children a fun place to go where they can interact with other kids outside of their normal environments. But as fun as eating out may be, it also serves a higher purpose.

“Kids out there — they may not get a meal at night,” Copper said.

And that’s where law enforcement and a hometown football hero are stepping in, in service to the community.

Across the U.S., law enforcement is being urged by experts to bridge the gaps between officers of the law and the communities they serve — an attempt to build relationships that could potentially circumvent future civil unrest, according to Police and Fire Services Director Stacy Drakeford.

But Washington already has been moving in that direction for several years, Drakeford said.

“Now you see this real emergence of community policing,” Drakeford said. “We’re slowly revolving back to the true beginnings, which is the basic: customer service, to serve and protect and what service means. We have to reeducate ourselves about what service really means. To protect is easy. It’s the service we have to focus on. This NFL week is just a part of our commitment to service to our community.”

Driving the current back-to-basics movement are recent cases of alleged police brutality countered by rioting in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Drakeford said.

It’s a cycle of negativity that needs to be countered, and according to Copper, one similar to that faced by professional athletes — in the news, the negative is much more of a draw than the positive.

“I think that’s just the nature of our society,” Copper said. “Players do a ton of stuff for children’s hospitals, for their hometowns, Toys for Tots, and this is all year ‘round. It’s not nationally covered — a lot of times it’s not even locally covered. It’s a good deed they’re doing, but that doesn’t necessarily make for good news. … It’s not a good deal, but that’s the way it works sometimes.”

This is where WPD Community Outreach Coordinator Kimberly Grimes comes in—it’s her job to facilitate the relationship between Washington law enforcement and the greater community, in addition to organizing the NFL weekends.

“I think we have a better relationship that I can recall than we have ever had. It’s almost as though we’re ahead of everybody, if you ask me, in what we’re really trying to do right now. … We actually started three or four years ago. We are taking the initiative to prevent a lot of things from happening, how to create relationships and mend relationships.”

It starts with community events, Grimes said, like a free dinner for a child who might not get dinner that night; a block party in Festival Park and exhibition basketball game on Friday, with free football and basketball camps on Saturday.

“Being invested in the community, being a part of the community. That’s what the Washington Police and Fire Services are about,” Drakeford said.

“We’re very lucky to have these guys in our corner — not just to protect and serve but to actually serve the community,” Copper said.