LARGO, Fla. — The Largo Police Department is marking its 100th anniversary this weekend.

In order to celebrate its centennial, the department will have activities for kids, face painting, free food, vehicle displays and tours of the police department.

The free community event will be held rain or shine on Sunday, Feb. 18 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Largo Police Department headquarters on Highland Avenue North.

Covering just under 20 square miles in the center of Pinellas County, the Largo Police Department has had to change and adapt as the city has grown.

“I think as time changes, the face of law enforcement and what we do changes,” said Chief Mike Loux.

As the story goes, the police department was formed after a band of robbers broke into the Largo Bank located at 1st and 3rd SW in 1921. They cut telephone lines and blew up the safe with explosives, making off with $25,000. That spurred the commission to start the police department a few years later.

The original Largo Police Department had one chief and one officer with a primary job of providing security.

From there, the department grew as the community did. Protests and social movements in the 1970s pushed the department to make their first major round of changes. They began hiring with diversity, created the SWAT team, and got their first police K9.

“Largo, like most agencies, had to respond to that and how do you do that? By getting better trained and more equipment,” Loux explained.

In more recent years, policing has shifted and expanded once again. Now, the focus isn’t just on enforcing the law and responding to 911 calls, it’s also about trying to get to the cause of the problem.

“100 years later, we now need to be responsive to people that are in mental health crisis and people who are going though bouts of homelessness,” Loux said.

The Largo Police Department created its Problem Oriented Policing unit (POP) in order to get to the bottom of the issues people in the community are facing. The POP team consists of officers that work in crime prevention for the elderly, providing resources for the homeless, and a system navigator who follows through with each individual case to set people up for long-term success. 

“We’ve gotten to the point now where the social services aspect of law enforcement is so important because there are people who aren’t committing crimes but they need our assistance,” Ofc. Stephen Malandro explained.

The Largo Police Department has between 150-160 sworn officers.