National Night Out at the National Mall!

Thousands of DC-area residents and out-of-town (and out-of-country) visitors stopped by the National Mall yesterday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of National Night Out with Target, the DC Metropolitan Police Department, and Memorial Fund and Museum staff.

With everything from a Junior Forensic Scientist fingerprint activity booklet to free photographs behind cardboard replicas of real Museum artifacts, our exhibit boasted some of the highest visitation of any booth at the event! (Okay, we just couldn’t beat the free cold bottles of water that Target employees and volunteers gave out in the center of all the activity! It is August in DC, after all.)

National Night Out was a wonderful success for the NLEOMF. We got a chance to meet some great law enforcement supporters and interact with a staple of the National Mall and of Washington, DC - tourists! With clipboards in hand, Museum team members approached visitors with questions about their impressions of law enforcement movies and TV shows - the characters, the plots and the scenes that have come to shape the way we view law enforcement today.

Who is your favorite TV or movie cop character?
What is your favorite car chase?
What is the best shootout?
What is the best line from a cop movie or TV show?

We hope to use the answers to our questionnaire to help form content for the Museum's "Reel to Real" Gallery.

To try out the questionnaire yourself, and help us come up with ideas for the soon-to-be-built National Law Enforcement Museum, click here.

Thank you to everyone who celebrated National Night Out 2008 - in DC or any other city! The key to keeping our neighborhoods, and our police officers, safe comes from the way we all work together -- families, communities and law enforcement.

Check out the fun in our slideshow!