The Naval Station Rota community gathered together at Sea View Pines for the annual National Night Out celebration, Aug. 8.

The event has occurred all across the nation and U.S. military bases across the globe every year in August since 1984, promoting security, police-community relationships and community involvement in crime prevention. This year's celebration was the installation's 33rd National Night Out event.

Participants paraded from the Captain's Circle in base housing to Sea View Pines to kick-off the event, which included free food, music and various exhibits with activities and educational information.

"It allows families to come out and get to know the fire, the police, all the services that they have on base," said Lt. Cmdr. Walter Zapf, the base security officer. "We enjoy doing it here because we have that close-knit community here in Rota."

Service members, civilians, Spanish local nationals and their families were able to visit numerous stations, including watching military working dog demonstrations, sitting in emergency vehicles, and learning about various organizations such as the American Red Cross and Rota's Security Department, Fire and Emergency Services, and Emergency Management.

"The significance of National Night Out is to educate the community and to strengthen the ties between law enforcement in the community," said Chief (select) Master-at-Arms Whitney Cloke, one of the National Night Out coordinators. "It's a national event and it educates the community on what we do."

The participating organizations included the base Fire Department, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 8, Navy Environmental Preventative Medicine Unit 7, Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team Company Europe, tenant commands and support services assigned to the base. Spanish local police and the Guardia Civil also participated in the event to continue building the American and Spanish relationship.

"It's all a joint effort here to keep military personnel and civilians safe in the community, and it's about getting out and meeting each other," said Cloke. "We care about the community. We want to make our community safe and our streets safe and keep our children safe."

Cloke said the event was a bigger turnout from last year's because of the growing community and the arrival of the four Forward-Deployed Naval Force destroyers.

"I was able to see last year's National Night Out, which was a great event. But this one is a lot bigger," said Cloke. "We have a bigger community now and we try to plan to be able to accommodate our larger growing community."

The National Association of Town Watch sponsored the evening event. NATW is a non-profit crime prevention organization in the United States and Canada funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, focused on developing and promoting crime prevention in communities across the nation.

For more information, visit http://www.navy.mil, http://www.facebook.com/usnavy, or http://www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from Naval Station Rota, Spain, visit http://www.navy.mil/.