“Guns and Hoses consists of local police departments against our local fire departments in a charity event the helps the Officer Down Memorial Page,” said Lino Lakes police officer Nate Hamann.
The Officer Down Memorial Page honors fallen officers across the county.
Lino Lakes is all to familiar with losing one of their own and what it means to honor those in the line of duty.
“We’ve dealt with that. In 2005 we lost officer Shawn Silvera to a tragic accident on the freeway, hit by a driver so it couldn’t be closer to our hearts,” said Paulson.
The community showed strong support for the first annual Guns vs. Hoses hockey game.
“We had incredible outreach from the community from donations. Everything from donated hockey tickets for the Gophers, donated hockey tickets for the Minnesota State High School hockey tournament. Schwan’s rink steeped up and donated all this ice to us which is awesome. They gave away an hour of ice time to one of the spectators and a bunch of other businesses. Holiday gave us gift cards, target gave away gift cards, the list goes on and on, it was just so incredible,” said Paulson.
These items were then put in raffle for the spectators who donated and chuck-a-puck donations as well.
“We had a very big turnout, we were very excited to see how many people we would actually get to show up to this event. It started out just as a small event and then just blew up with the more involvement we had with businesses in the community that wanted to donate so we just wanted to make this bigger and better,” said Hamann.
Taking to the ice in skates and hockey gear also helps show the public that these are real people with families too.
“A lot of people forget about the officers that have died in the line of duty and with the way the community is now, or the perception of police officers is all bad but their is a lot good and we want to show we’re not just the bad,” said Hamann.
“It’s good talking to people about it and it just grew larger than we could ever imagine so we had a heck of a turnout tonight. It was an awesome game, no injuries, we couldn’t ask for anything more,” said Paulson.
