CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Southwest Side Catholic church whose school has 145 students who are children of police officers will host a fundraiser for new bulletproof vests Sunday morning.
Ald. Matt O’Shea’s “Get Behind The Vest” pancake breakfast fundraiser will be at St. John Fisher Church on 102nd and Washtenaw in the West Beverly neighborhood.
Maura Nash, principal of the school and wife of a Chicago police officer knows the importance of replacing vests every five years.
"The quality gets worse as time goes on and you, obviously, want to be safe. That’s protecting all your internal organs, God forbid you would get in a situation like that."
Giglio is proud of her dad, but, she said, "it’s scary having him as a police officer sometimes, so it’s good to know that there’s fundraisers like this to help him and everyone else."
Marty Canavan, 14, said he wrote an essay on the importance of providing new bulletproof vests to police officers saying "it’s a matter of life or death and it can save your life."
Canavan added: "Neither of my parents are police officers but I know many, many people who are police officers so it really affects me."
Miles Durkin,13, spent hours putting together the video that will be shown during the pancake breakfast. It's called, "145 Reasons Why SJF Backs The Badge." He said that "it shows a lot of kids saying why they love their dad and why they’re really proud of them for being a police officer."
The alderman added that since the Get Behind The Vest effort started with the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation in October 2014, more than 8,000 Chicago police officers have received replacement vests.
Their initial vest is provided by the city upon graduation from the police academy and Ald. O'Shea said that "when officers perspire, if a vest is stuffed in a locker or in a trunk, fibers break down or receives any type of an impact so they need to be replaced every five years."
"If we can raise enough money to purchase 500 a year, we’ll be able to stay in line with what the demands are," he said.
The “Get Behind The Vest” Pancake Breakfast is from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., Sun., Feb. 24 at St. John Fisher, 10234 S. Washtenaw. The cost is $5/person or $25/family.