CUMMING — Law enforcement officers walked with groups of children Tuesday night, but they weren’t arresting anyone and the kids didn’t look at them in fear.

The annual Cops and Kids program paired families with deputies from a number of area agencies to create a Christmas the kids may otherwise have gone without.

Sgt. D.P. Land Memorial Lodge No. 82 of the Fraternal Order of Police organized the shopping spree to allow each child to spend $150 on almost anything they wanted — toys, clothes or other presents — at the Walmart in Cumming.

“This is an opportunity for us to break a mold with the children. In other words, they get to see an officer in a different light other than bad,” said Chris Shelton, immediate past president of the local FOP lodge.

“It breaks barriers with them. And the people you see here are 100 percent volunteer. It’s a fantastic program, where the officers actually want to give back to the community.”

Social workers through Forsyth County Schools identified students in need and registered them for the event. This year, about 120 kids were sponsored.

“They would not have a Christmas otherwise, if we were not able to provide it to them,” said Shelton, who has been volunteering for the program since 1997.

Shopping money is donated by members of the community throughout the year.

Forsyth County Sheriff’s deputies and officers with Cumming police and the Georgia State Patrol, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Federal Bureau of Investigation, took part. The police departments of Brookhaven and Sandy Springs also were represented at the event.

“It’s where we’re able to give back,” Shelton said. “To take a bad situation, because they usually have come from a bad situation, and we can make a good spin on it and make it a good situation. Where they can see we bleed like they do, we cry like they do.

“We want them to understand that we have feelings, too, and they have feelings, and we want them to understand that it’s all about Christmas.”

Sgt. Lamar Bowen, who recently retired after nearly 25 years with the local sheriff’s office, has participated in the shopping program 10 or 12 times.

“This gives us the chance to be something more than just a uniform. To be out showing them we care about them,” Bowen said. “These kids, a lot of them don’t have anything, and this just gives us a chance to bless them with an opportunity they don’t have.”

Cumming Police Officer Francisco Ruiz and his wife, Mary Jo, walked through the aisles with two siblings and their mother, marking off prices for items as the cart filled up.

“This is what we do. It’s one of the reasons I got into the police force to begin with,” he said. “If you’re not helping families out, what are you doing as a police officer?”

The mother of the two kids the Ruiz family accompanied said they just moved to Georgia from Pennsylvania, and Christmas would have been hard to pull together.

“It was just the world to them,” Sabrina Nilson said. “I know it.”

Shelton said the kids often surprise him.

“They show up and, believe it or not, all they want to do is look like the other kids in school. They buy clothes. They buy tennis shoes. They’re not so much into toys, which is what you would think,” he said.

“Two years ago, I had the heartbreaking experience where I had a little girl who was cold at night, and all she wanted was a bed set so that she wouldn’t be cold.”

Shelton and his wife bought her the bed set with their own money so the girl could still get other items.

“Then she wanted to spend money on her parents,” he said. “She wanted to get her mom a card.”