08/13/2026
A Paintbrush and a Set of Numbers Built a Relationship
By Officer Cherrise Knight
A paintbrush was supposed to change a house. No one could have known that it would also change a relationship.
A partnership between the Riviera Beach Police Department and the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County began as a simple neighborhood improvement project. Yet it quickly became something far more meaningful. It became a connection between police officers and Ms. Deloris Roundtree, a resident who needed more than a freshly painted home. She needed to know that officers saw her, cared about her, and would continue to check on her long after the paint dried.
As officers and Solid Waste Authority staff worked, the house began to transform. The walls looked renewed. The home appeared brighter, and Ms. Roundtree loved the change. She saw more than fresh paint. She saw people who had taken the time to come to her home, of 53 years, and make a difference. For the officers, the work did not end when the paintbrushes were put away. Something was still missing. The residence, in the Monroe Heights neighborhood, had no address numbers. It would have been easy to overlook such a small detail. The project was complete, the home looked better, and the job appeared finished.
But the job was not finished. Officers bought new address numbers and returned to install them. It was a small gesture, but small gestures often carry the greatest meaning. Officers were no longer simply helping to paint a house. They were paying attention to the person who lived there, and Ms. Roundtree noticed.
The paint brought officers to the home. The missing numbers gave them another reason to help. What happened afterward, however, was the part no one could have painted into the original plan. A relationship began to form. Officers continued to check in on Ms. Roundtree to make sure she was doing well. The visits became familiar. Their presence became reassuring. Officers were no longer just uniformed figures who had entered her neighborhood for a project. They had become people she knew, people she recognized, people she could talk to, and people she looked forward to seeing.
The paint changed the appearance of the home, but the relationship changed the experience of living in it. Ms. Roundtree now looks forward to seeing officers. If too much time passes between visits, she reminds them that they cannot stay away so long. This is the part of community policing that cannot always be measured in a statistic. You can count how many homes were painted. You can track how many community projects were completed. You can measure calls for service and response times. But it is far more difficult to measure what happens when a senior citizen sees a police officer and feels comfort instead of distance. It is harder to measure the value of an officer taking a few minutes to ask, “How are you doing?” Yet those moments can be among the most important in policing.
Public safety is not built only during emergencies. It is built in ordinary moments. It is built when officers show up before something goes wrong. It is built when residents have an opportunity to know the people behind the badge. It is built when officers understand that sometimes the best way to serve a community is simply to be present.
Young people are watching. They are watching how officers enter their neighborhoods. They are watching how officers speak to their parents and grandparents. They are watching to see whether the people wearing uniforms are only there to enforce rules or whether they are also there to serve, listen, and help. Community policing is not only about solving today’s problems. It is about shaping tomorrow’s relationship between young people and law enforcement. A young person who sees an officer helping an elderly neighbor may remember that image differently than an officer seen only during a traffic stop, an arrest, or an emergency.
Community policing is not about what happens when the police are called. It is about what happens when they simply show up, lend a hand, and become part of the community they serve.
