Edina Police Ditching Razors for Worthwhile Cause

If you suddenly feel like almost every police officer around Edina is sporting some sort of facial hair, you're not going crazy.

More than 30 members of the Edina Police Department are taking part in Movember—an annual, month-long event that sees men all over the world grow mustaches to raise awareness of prostate and other male cancer—for the first time in the department's history. Officers will be sporting goatees, beards, fu manchus and anything else imaginable in an effort to get Edina talking about cancer.

Police Chief Jeff Long said the idea of taking part in Movember came to him after hearing about members of the Minnesota Wild doing it last season. Long saw it as a fantastic way for Edina police to serve as "walking, talking billboards" for men's health issues during the month of November.

"In a profession that's pretty typically clean-shaven, we just alter our appearance slightly and people start asking questions as to why," Long said. "It allows us to make our community more aware of men's health issues and encourage them to get checked for prostate and testicular cancer."

Movember, which originated in Australia, has grown to a global phenomenon in recent years, with 1.9 million people having taken part since its inception. While people taking part in Movember—often referred to as Mo Bros and Mo Sistas—aren't required to raise money, the cause raised more than $126 million for cancer research in 2011 alone.

Long initially expected somewhere between five and 10 members of the department to take part in Movember, but said he was pleasantly surprised when 36 employees—26 men and 10 women—decided to embrace the cause. While they might not be able to grow a mustache for Movember, Long said the 10 female volunteers will be donning fake mustaches or drawing their own facial hair with mascara on Nov. 29.

"By the time this month ends, I have no idea what our officers are going to look like," Long said. "I'm certain it's going to raise some awareness in the community."

Long said taking action to raise cancer awareness was particularly important to him in the wake of close friend Sgt. Steve Stroh's passing earlier this year. Stroh, 47, died after battling Multiple Myeloma—a cancer which attacks plasma cells in the bone marrow—for more than four years. 

"One of the things with Steve is I always felt to helpless," Long said. "I had no outlet to help him and I just felt like there was nothing I could do. Something like this is an opportunity to get out there and inform people to get tested early and hopefully prevent something from happening to them."

Lead Dispatcher Tony Martin said the department taking part in Movember is "a great way to support a worthwhile cause and bring awareness to men's health." 

"The longest I'd ever gone without shaving before this was two weeks," said Martin, who has yet to decide what he's growing. "I'm starting out with a goatee and we'll see where I take it from there."

"My hope is there there's not some sort of major event in the city where I'd have to go in front of a camera looking like Grizzly Adams," Long joked. "I guess that would bring even more attention to the cause, though."

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