By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Would you trade a Tom McQuillen card for a Mike Trout card? How about an Anthony Garreffi card for a Bryce Harper card?
McQuillen? Garreffi? Do they play for the Yankees? Or the Pirates, maybe?
Actually, they’re on the SICPD team. The Sea Isle City Police Department.
Chief Tom McQuillen and Capt. Anthony Garreffi are among the 23 full-time Sea Isle officers featured on new baseball-style trading cards that are part of the police department’s community outreach program.
McQuillen said the idea is for children and teenagers, in particular, to get to know the police officers even better through the trading cards.
“It’s another opportunity to engage with youth,” he explained in an interview Sunday.
However, adults are also encouraged to collect the trading cards and strike up a friendly conversation with the police officers, he pointed out.
“We never want to discourage anybody from coming up to a police officer and engaging them,” McQuillen said.
The police department hopes that the cards are another avenue for members of the community to meet the officers and vice versa.
“The idea is to stop and talk for a few minutes. They get to know us and we, in turn, get to talk to them,” he said.
He added, “This helps to bridge that gap.”
The officers carry their trading cards and hand them out after they are done talking with kids and adults. The cards include their names and pictures of them in uniform.
“Our full-time Police Officers have new trading cards to give out to our young fans. If you stop and chat with one of us, be sure to ask for a trading card. We feel this is a good way for our officers to interact with the children. At the end of the summer we can see who collected the most,” the police department says on its Facebook page.
McQuillen, though, urged the public not to ask any officers for cards if they are busy with their police duties, such as a motor vehicle stop or are in the middle of an investigation. He said they should simply wait until the officers are done.
No one has collected all of the cards yet. McQuillen said the department is considering ways to recognize people who collect a full set of cards, perhaps with a personal tour of the police station.
So far, the cards have been a hit. McQuillen said he is very pleased with the early response from the community.
“It’s gone over very well. The public loves it. There’s been a great reception,” he said.
Good-natured public comments on the police department’s Facebook page seem to back that up. They range from the comical to the clever. One of them refers to McQuillen’s old nickname, “Quillsy.”
“I’ll trade you a 1980 Mike Schmidt for a 2021 Quillsy,” poster Shawn Sypherd wrote.
“That 2021 Quillsy trade is a no brainer Mr. Sypherd,” Seamus Hogan responded in another post.
Other members of the police department also got shout-outs in Facebook comments. Some posters suggested including police dispatchers, retired officers and paramedics on the trading cards.
Fans of the trading cards will be happy that they are free. Yet that didn’t stop one Facebook poster from joking about the value of McQuillen’s card.
“I heard an Autographed one from the Chief is going for thousands on E Bay!!!!” Mark Evangelisti cracked.
So, a hundred years from now is there a possibility that a Tom McQuillen trading card will be worth as much as a Babe Ruth card?
“If it would be worth a fraction of a Babe Ruth card, I would be happy,” McQuillen said, laughing.
