By most accounts, the charitable toy giveaways by the Brownsville Police and Fire departments went very well.
Kids who otherwise wouldn't have gotten a toy because of their parents' economic situation walked away with smiles. Well, almost all of them.
While there is always the usual carping about Matamoros families hauling their children here to get freebies from the Brownsville side, this time there was pointed criticism of the way the fire department handed out its toys.
It seems that some parents were miffed when they attended the Fire Department giveaway at Toys-R-Us store at the Old Amigoland Mall site. It wasn't that their children didn't receive a gift, it was the way the giveaway was operated that fueled the criticism.
"At the police department giveaway, Chief Carlos Garcia wasn't micromanaging the event," said a parent. "The process was smooth and the children got to pick their toys. At the fire department event, Chief Lenny Perez personally picked the toys each child got."
Other parents said that Perez issued an order than only every third family should receive a bicycle – the object of desire of most adolescents. Although this might have seemed fair, the results were, at best, incongruous.
"I have a boy who's almost in his teens and he got a small stuffed teddy bear like the ones you get at the HEB quarter machines," said a parent. "The little girl behind us, because she was the third person after the bike, got a bicycle. She wasn't even old enough to ride a tricycle. But that was the order the chief gave. A lot of the kids were disappointed."
Perez's micromanagement of the event wasn't the only thing that rankled a group of parents. Apparently, after some pre-adolescent kids walked away with small stuffed animals because the department claimed there weren't enough good toys to go around, they found out that Perez had sent some of the best toys abroad.
"The chief had the fire department send three large boxes of toys to Matamoros to be distributed there," said one. "Don't misunderstand me. Even though my kid got a stuffed animal, I appreciate the gesture. But why does the chief use this event to send theses toys to Matamoros as a public relations gimmick? It doesn't make sense. We have plenty of needy kids here, too."
1 comment:
The poor are so depressing.
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