Chicago, Ill (by Billie Wright) - Kids in Englewood, a neighborhood in Chicago's south side, are building ties with police, thanks to Lt. Enrico Dixon. " What I realized is that not all youth are athletes." Having this knowledge, he understood the need and brought his love of RC monster truck racing to students.
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Lt. Dixon sees this program as essential to keeping children involved in healthy activities. "I think it's important for these youth to grow up as youth. There's too many kids that are growing up too fast."
The program, called Inner-city RCP, is unique. Lt. Dixon says, "Our focus was to bring something to the table that we knew didn't exist anywhere in this country."
In order to house the program and continue to build relationships between communities and police, Lt. Dixon created the Cobra Back Foundation. His focus turned to RC racing, "There's so many organizations within this Englewood community where we are housed that are doing the food drives, they're doing the backpack giveaway, they're doing various different things. So, we felt that we didn't feel the need to enter that market when we knew we could enter a market that was completely untouched."
Lt.. Dixon understands the challenge of the kids who participate. He grew up on the south side of Chicago. He sees the value of giving kids room to engage in interests that are not related to sports. "There's not much out there that's leaving them space to be competitive."
The ultimate hope is to expand the program to other areas in the city.
