National Night Out in Oakdale had another successful event the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 2 in bringing out all members of the community to enjoy food, drinks, games, and prizes.

Oakdale’s event coordinators Kara Guevara and Janeen Yates from Oakdale Police Department partnered with the ‘captains’ in surrounding neighborhoods to plan the NNO festivities.

NNO involves over 38 million people and more than 16,000 communities across the country to join together for “America’s Night Out.”

The annual event promotes police-community partnerships to make neighborhoods safer and a more caring place to live. The event is designed to bring police and neighbors together under positive circumstances to strengthen the relationship between them while enhancing the sense of community.

This year the OPD and NNO captains planned five block parties throughout the city including one large kickoff event at Medlen Park in the Bridle Ridge neighborhood. A presentation of the colors was followed by brief remarks from Police Chief Jerry Ramar and Mayor Cherilyn Bairos welcoming the crowd to the celebration.

The city locations this were at California and Laurel with captains Randy and Lynn Reeves; Golden Empire Apartments with captain Kathy Waterman; Tesoro with captains Linda King, Cindy McGhee, and Debbie Savage; Bridle Ridge with captains Jerry Freitas and Cathy Coito; School and Olive with captain Kevin McDonald.

Each location had their own twist on the prizes and food offered, at Golden Empire Apartments manager and location captain Kathy Waterman provided a potluck style with dishes that were made and brought out by tenants in the apartments. One table was completely filled with small homemade desserts by tenant and local event baker Janet Anderson. She made a variety of mini-Bundt cakes and layered parfaits that were a hit with attendees at that location.