The Denver Police Department will deliver 600 Thanksgiving meals to families in need throughout the week of Nov. 16 to ease the hardship many residents are facing in the wake of COVID-19.  

The initiative is made possible through a partnership between DPD and the Denver Police Foundation, AT&T, Wal-Mart and We Don’t Waste. Each holiday meal will include a frozen turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and corn. 

The hundreds of families who will receive the donations were identified by DPD’s community resource officers. The department is not accepting requests or applications for the giveaways. 

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen and other partner representatives will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. Monday outside of the Denver Police Crime Laboratory to make the announcement before the turkey giveaway teams head to their districts for meal distribution. 

More than 76,000 people in Denver were considered food insecure before the onset of the pandemic, according to Feeding America’s “Map the Meal Gap” study.

Soaring unemployment and the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has left an estimated 22% of Denverites hungry, according to the Department of Public Health and Environment, more than double the city’s previous hunger rate.