COVINGTON, Ky. — A retired northern Kentucky police chief is trying to raise funds to help police officers in Ukraine. For Mike Ward, getting needed supplies to officers facing the harsh realities of war is personal.
Ward has been on a mission, asking anyone who will listen for help for his friends and fellow officers overseas. Ward retired from being Alexandria’s police chief in 2019 to go work in Ukraine. That was after Bryan Carter, Covington’s former police chief, brought a contingent of Ukrainian officers from Ukraine to Kentucky to look at smaller agencies and see how they function. Carter helped Ward get involved.
“One of the things they didn’t do very well was police the rural areas of their country, which made up 40% of their population,” Ward said.
Ward’s history with the country goes back to the Cold War. Ukraine was his wartime assignment while he was stationed in Greece with the Air Force in the early 1980s.
In the last three years, Ward said he’s been to the country eight or nine times to help establish the Community Police Program. His stays were as short as two weeks, and as long as six weeks.
“What we were trying to do was get them out of the old Soviet style of policing to a more western style,” Ward said. “And then asking them to take that information and mold it, and make a Ukrainian model. And I think they did an exceptional job in doing that.”
Ward’s most recent trip was this past summer. He was in Kharkiv for four weeks, and then in Kyiv for two weeks of teaching.
He said he came away impressed with Ukrainian’s commitment.
“Their sense of nationalism is second to none. It truly is,” he said.
He recalled going to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, and speaking to a Ukrainian server, who had a tattoo of the Statue of Liberty, and the words “We the people.” Ward asked her if she had ever been to New York.
“And her response was no, I’ve never been out of Kyiv, but my dream is to be as free as you are. And that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It just gave me chills all over the place,” he said.
Watching what’s unfolded in Ukraine over the last month with Russia’s invasion and continued bombing of the country, Ward came to love and appreciate what has been heartbreaking, he said.
“I’ve made some really good friends over there. Because they’re just like us. They want to do what’s right. So this kind of got personal. My wife won’t let me pick up a rifle and go over there and help, so trying to figure out the best way we can help is when Bryan Carter and I created the American Police Outreach Program,” Ward said.
The program Carter and Ward created is sponsored through the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police, Kentucky FOP, and the Women’s Law Enforcement Network in Kentucky.
They’re collecting funds to get supplies over to Ukrainian police officers, many of whom Ward trained, and their families.
“Because they’re at the bottom of the food chain. So we’re trying to funnel money where we know it is best served, to those officers, and to take care of them,” he said. “Just imagine, you take a Covington officer that is experienced in working the street in the city of Covington, and now tomorrow, he’s thrust into a combat role where everything that he’s been trained as a policeman goes out the window. And now you’re faced with kill or be killed,” he said.
Ward said he knows of at least 19 Ukrainian officers that have been killed, including one he taught.
“If you remember the bombing of the police headquarters in Kharkiv, I went by that building every day for an entire month. It was two blocks from the hotel that I stayed at. The university they bombed was where they trained police. That’s where I trained them. And then I see officers that I’ve, I may not know their names, but I know their faces, laying on the street with rifles in hand trying to block the approaches of oncoming Russians,” he said. “We are so protected here in the United States, and thank God for it. But it just burns me that we’re not doing more to help them.”
Even if it comes one $10 donation at a time, Ward said he’s going to keep asking. For his friends. Ward said he is guaranteeing 100% of funds are being donated with no administrative costs taken out.
Anyone wishing to donate can visit the website.