Dispatcher crochets gifts for families of fallen officers
Johnson wants families to know their sacrifice, service was meaningful
A police communications officer for the Charles County Sheriff’s Office spends her free time and money crocheting gifts for families of fallen officers around the countr y.
Jennifer Johnson, a wife and mom of three, has worked as a police communications officer for a total of 11 years; however, she has been crocheting for about 30 years.
“I’ve been crocheting since I was 11,” Johnson said.
She said that she grew up in Indian Head and used to get off the bus at a neighbor’s house down the street, since her mother was a single mom and a nurse.
“She was elderly and didn’t move around a lot, so we would either watch soap operas or she taught me how to crochet,” Johnson said.
She said she always crocheted gifts for friends and family; however, it wasn’t until a tragedy struck that she started making Thin Blue Line crochets.
“[The Charles County Sheriff’s Office] lost an officer in 2014, Jamel L. Clagett, 447, and he was one of the midnight guys, so I worked with him every night and we were close,” she said.
“He used to come into communications a lot; he would bring us food and coffee.”
Johnson said that Clagett even took her son to school for her a couple of times, when no one else could.
“When he passed away, it was hard. He was young, and he was one of ours. I made a shawl for his mom and my sister made a pin for it,” she said.
Johnson gave the first Thin Blue Line shawl she ever made to Clagett’s mother at his viewing.
Last year in March, the Prince George’s County Police Department lost officer Jacai Colso due to an active shooter at their police station, she said.
“I went to his funeral, and I took a shawl for his wife,” Johnson said.
“I got home that day and was talking to my friend about it and she said ‘why don’t you start a Facebook page and see if you can get people to help you make the shawls and you can be the distribution point and send them where they need to go?’ So I thought ‘oh, that’s a good idea.’ I started the [Thin Blue Line Memorial Crafts] Facebook page and I’ve had a couple of ladies, one that lives in Baltimore, one in Connecticut, have made a couple of shawls.”
She said there is also a “wonderful lady” in Montana, who’s husband is a sheriff, that has made 20 shawls over a couple of years for Johnson to send out to families.
“Every four or six months, she sends me a box full of shawls, or a blanket and some shawls,” Johnson said.
Now, Johnson tries to send a crochet gift to all of the families who are recently suffering the loss of an officer.
As a dispatcher, “the one mission for our day, is to make sure everybody goes home, and when they don’t we take it personally, no matter where they are,” she said.
“I just want them to know somebody cares and to offer them comfort.
“I usually send a shawl for the wife or the mother [of the fallen officer], if they are not married. If it’s a female officer, if I have time, or if I have one on hand, I’ll send a blanket for the husband or the father, and if I don’t I’ll send a hat because they only take an hour to make.”
She said she sends the crochets to the agency that the fallen officer worked for, with a letter saying what it’s for and then they pass it on to the families.
Johnson said that she has received thank you letters from several agencies that she has sent gifts and one directly from an officer’s family.
When a shooter shot and killed five officers in Dallas in July 2016, Johnson sent crochet gifts to all the wives and children of the officers.
“It took me three weeks. I made five shawls for the wives, one of the daughters was a teenager, so I sent a shawl for her, they had four younger kids, so I sent two stuffed police officers and two stuffed Thin Blue Line bears,” she said.
Just recently, on Nov. 29, Johnson attended the funeral of Baltimore’s fallen officer, Det. Sean Suiter and gave a Thin Blue Line shawl to his mother.
“There were probably 3,000 people or more there. There were people lined up all along the highway, they had signs, they had flags. There was a soldier standing on the hood of his car at attention. I cried all the way.”
Johnson said that over the years, she has sent out about 45 crochet items to fallen officer’s families in the last year and a half. Although, she said that she is currently 65 items behind this year.
“If I get to the end of the year and I haven’t gotten to them all, I have to stop and start over because it’s too much pressure,” she said.
It takes her between eight and 10 hours to crochet a shawl and about 40 hours to crochet a blanket. Johnson said that she is still new to receiving donations, but she said that she would love donations of yarn because “yarn’s expensive.”
“I did put on the Thin Blue Line Memorial Crafts Facebook page, where people could sponsor a shawl, blanket or just shipping,” Johnson said.
She said that it costs approximately $60 to make a blanket and $20 to make a shawl, including shipping fees.
Johson said that several people have donated supplies to help her make these crochet gifts. She said a company called All This Wood donated 70 wooden tags that have the “Thin Blue Line Memorial Crafts” logo on it, which Johnson sews onto the crochets, and when she ran out, a Waldorf woman paid for her to have more wooden tags made.
“It’s nice that Jennifer can make the shawls and blankets for the families of fallen officers,” Charles County Sheriff Troy Berry (D) said. “The fact they are handmade gives the receiver a sense of how much people truly care for them. I’m proud Jennifer works for us. Her kindness certainly reflects positively on our agency.”
Johnson said that after she finishes a shawl for a fallen officer’s family member, she feels like she has accomplished something that will bring comfort to the family.
“I hope to show them that their sacrifice means something,” Johnson said.