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Check out epic video from 1986 of Sergeant Safety from the Shreveport Police Department teaching local kids about safety with 'Willy Wonka' of all people! Okay, not the real Willy Wonka, because that's a fictional character, but you'll understand in a minute.

Who was Shreveport's Sergeant Safety?

Sgt. Safety was actually Lieutenant Sonny Grubbs who spent just over twenty-two years with the Shreveport Police Department after serving in the U.S. Army. Lt. Grubbs was known to our community affectionately as Sgt. Safety wherever he went because of his work in crime prevention. In his role as Sgt. Safety, he gave safety programs throughout Shreveport at Caddo schools, made appearances like you'll see in the video below on local T.V. programming for children, gave classes for Juvenile Court on defensive driving, and was the traffic reporter for a local radio station. Unfortunately, we lost J.W. 'Sonny' Grubbs in 2006.

So what's the deal behind this Sgt. Safety video?

I found this video on our local Shreveport Reddit page posted by u/aktionkat. Thank you, by the way, because you brought back some major memories for me of growing up in the Shreveport-Bossier City, LA area in the '80s! The video came from Paul Garner - Art & Artifice on YouTube. According to him, the video is from 1986 and was shot and produced at Cable Vision of Shreveport. The role of Willy Wonka was played by Mark Sweet.

After a bit of internet sleuthing, I found Mark Sweet online and this gem! I hope you enjoyed this walk down memory lane ;)



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