"It humanizes everybody and lets us sit down and see people as they are," the event's founder, Sgt. Chris Cognac, of the Hawthorne Police Department in Hawthorne, Calif., said in a CNN interview posted on the initiative's Facebook page here.
"There's the hard questions. Sometimes people will come in. They'll have issues," Cognac said in the report.
But it's also a chance for police and citizens to "get to know each other," he said in the CNN interview.
Click here to see a video clip of the interview on CNN.
Members of the Yonkers Police Department got a chance to speak to Cognac over the summer before holding the department's first Coffee with a Cop event, according to police.
Friday's Coffee with a Cop is 9-11 a.m. at the diner, 833 Yonkers Ave., Yonkers.
For more information about the nationwide Coffee with a Cop Day, click here.
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