PAL stands for Police Activities League. It is a youth center and program to keep kids out of trouble and busy and it’s been around since 1971. PAL has served nearly half a million kids and their families throughout California. The entire point of PAL is to help out kids and their families in need of help and to create a bond between the youth and their local police officers.
PAL was first started by two police officers: Lt. Charlie Ellis from the San Francisco Police Department and Officer Jim Guido from the San Jose police Department. In 1971 there were only five departments that provided PAL. These programs were San Francisco, Vallejo, Richmond, Oakland, and San Jose. Lt. Ellis organized with other officers to take part in some tournaments. Officer Jim Guido helped along with three other officers to promote the California Police Activities League. California PAL became the first State PAL in the country. From 1990 to 2020 the PAL membership went to over 100 cities and counties.
PAL gives kids opportunities that many people might not be able to have. The mentors that work at PAL help the kids with their homework, they play games that are active so kids can have some form of exercise throughout the day. They even have consoles like computers, Xboxes, and PlayStation 5s. There’s movie nights and karaoke days as well.
PAL also has many field trips. There’s been some field trips to the movies, Six Flags, the zoo, Washington DC. I myself recently went on a trip with three other girls from PAL to Sacramento. We were able to go to the state capitol and meet many of the employees from there. Many PALs from different places in the state came along with us and we were able to meet them as well. We had the opportunity to meet Aric Jackson who is a motivational speaker. We also met a lady who was alongside Aric, her name was Sylvia and we met the boss who’s name is Jennifer Lopez. The entire trip overall was a great experience and PAL was given one million dollars donated from Senator Monique Limon.
PAL has affected families in great ways. They’ve taken in children when their parents couldn’t look after them, they’ve had many activities to help the families out as well. PAL sometimes has new shoes come in for the kids because many of the students’ families can’t afford new shoes. PAL also has some days where cops go shopping with the families to help assist in shopping and buy them what they need. There’s a 10k run that the police academy runs with the children and a golf tournament to help fundraise money so PAL can have more opportunities.
I interviewed a worker from the Keyes PAL, her name is Carla Garcia. I asked her why she chose this job and she said, “I chose this job because I saw it as an opportunity to get more experience with kids and it looked like a really great job. Many people have [said good things] about PAL and I was interested to see what it was about so I decided to go ahead and apply here.”
When asked about her favorite part of the job, Garcia replied with, “My favorite thing about the job is being able to help these kids out. Not many can afford new clothes or shoes or backpacks and here we have some days where we just give the new clothes and shoes out. The kids are always so thankful and it makes me really happy to see them happy.”
Many cities have a PAL Program – checkout your own city’s website for more information.