COLUMBIA, SC - At a time when conversations surrounding law enforcement are often framed as a choice between supporting police or supporting communities, one South Carolina organization is working to prove that premise wrong.
Serve & Connect believes safer communities require both, and that police officers, residents, and community leaders can accomplish far more when they see one another as partners rather than opposing sides.
For founder and CEO Kassy Alia Ray, Ph.D., that mission is deeply personal.
Her husband, Forest Acres Police Officer Greg Alia, was killed in the line of duty in 2015, when their son, Sal, was just six months old. In the aftermath, Alia Ray confronted not only grief, but what that loss would ultimately mean for her family.
“For me, [the] driving force since day one has always been Sal,” she said. “When there is such a significant loss...I think it’s understandable and easy to grow up with a legacy of bitterness and fear and anger. And I never wanted that for Sal.”
Instead, she wanted him to learn something different.
“I wanted him to know that bad things can happen, but to feel safe, to trust and to love and to see that even in the face of challenges and heartbreak, we can choose to make the world a better place and we can take action and choose how we respond,” she said.
That philosophy became the foundation for Serve & Connect. The work first took shape the night Greg was killed through the hashtag #heroesinblue, created to raise awareness of the positive stories involving law enforcement that too often go untold, something Greg himself had spoken about just months before his death. For Alia Ray, the movement also became part of her own process of finding peace after Greg’s death and a way to turn that loss into change.
Serve & Connect has also continued supporting officers and their families following critical incidents and line-of-duty deaths. Since 2016, the organization has raised $1.299 million! 100% of those funds went back to families following a crisis.
Giving Officers the Tools to Help
One of the organization's best-known initiatives is Greg’s Groceries, which provides law enforcement agencies with boxes of nonperishable food that officers can give directly to people experiencing hardship.
Police routinely encounter people during some of the worst moments of their lives. Poverty, mental illness, domestic violence and other crises often become problems officers are expected to confront, even when an arrest isn't the solution.
“Far too often police are really the front line to people in crisis,” Alia Ray explained. “They are encountering people in their most difficult moments and in very stressful and often dangerous situations. And they will frequently go out of their own way and own pockets to help, but they can’t do it alone.”
According to Alia Ray, more than 40 percent of the boxes delivered have resulted in officers referring recipients to additional resources, including food pantries, domestic violence shelters and mental health services.
What began in 2017 with 50 boxes and two agencies has expanded across South Carolina and into North Carolina, with more than 30,000 boxes packed!
Yet Alia Ray says the individual connections matter most.
“It’s really every individual box that’s packed that makes that difference or the connection that has grown from that, the ability to show up and care and build those relationships,” she said.
Police Cannot Do It Alone
That principle extends throughout Serve & Connect’s work.
The organization’s COMPASS framework focuses on creating trust-based public safety initiatives that bring law enforcement, residents and community organizations together. Serve & Connect has applied that philosophy through partnerships involving the Columbia Police Department, Richland County Sheriff’s Department and numerous community partners.
“We ask [police] to wear so many hats and be everything to everyone, but that’s just not reasonable for anybody and especially not the men and women who wear the badge who have a very, very critical and important job that they need to be able to do,” Alia Ray said.
Her answer is not to diminish law enforcement's role, but to strengthen it by surrounding officers with communities willing to participate in their own public safety.
“We need our community to work in partnership with our police,” she said. “We need community members to step up, to speak out, to take action.”
Challenging the ‘Us vs. Them’ Mentality
Ultimately, Alia Ray wants Serve & Connect to accomplish something larger than any single program: to challenge the narrative that police and the communities they serve occupy opposing sides.
“This dichotomy of us versus them, police versus community that has been perpetuated, especially in recent years...it’s really a false dichotomy,” she said.
Across the country, she argues, examples already exist of police officers and residents working successfully together. The challenge is making those successes visible and replicable.
“The more that we can really show what that looks like, how it works, make it really tangible, real and understandable, that we can challenge this paradigm and show how collaborative trust-based public safety already exists,” she said. “That is the way forward.”
One recent example came in Lancaster County, where Serve & Connect is partnering with the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office to bring officers and residents together in a community that struggled after a local mill closed and jobs and resources disappeared.
Alia Ray described police officers and residents of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds sitting at the same table discussing trust, respect and what they could accomplish together.
“Those are the stories that don’t get uplifted, that are real and are possible,” she said.
Taking the Model Nationwide
Serve & Connect's ambition now extends beyond South Carolina.
After years of developing programs and building partnerships, Alia Ray wants the organization to help establish a model that can be replicated elsewhere.
“We are really on a quest to change this narrative, to push back on us versus them, to bring people together,” she said. “And we’ve been seeing that spread across South Carolina. And we want to go big. We want to change this at a national level.”
It is an ambitious goal born from tragedy but sustained by the belief that communities do not have to choose sides.
Police need the communities they protect. Communities need the men and women willing to protect them. And both are stronger when they recognize that public safety is not something one side provides to the other.
It is something they build together.
To learn more about Serve & Connect, visit their website at https://serveandconnect.org/ and follow them on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
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Writer and author Eddie Molina has over 25 years of combined LEO and military service. Learn more about his interview articles at www.eddiemolina.com.
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