{"id":382843,"date":"2026-08-27T19:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T19:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/382843\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T19:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T19:30:15","slug":"jacksonville-fire-and-police-compete-in-battle-of-the-badges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/382843\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville fire and police compete in Battle of the Badges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"319\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/wnct_greenville_articles_424\/32b6b9214a76142c5c1f8836766340aa.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) &#8212; Jacksonville&#8217;s Fire and Police departments are competing head-to-head for votes in this year&#8217;s &#8216;Battle of the Badges&#8217; blood drive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The blood drive is happening at Jacksonville Commons Recreation Center until 5 p.m. Thursday. Those donating can either place a vote for police or fire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Please come out. Donate blood,&#8221; Fire Chief Tee Tallman said. &#8220;You can help save a life just like these officers, the firefighters do on a day in, day out basis, along with our EMS.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The blood drive comes as the American Red Cross says they are in critical need of blood donations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;The life you might save with that blood might be your own or a family member or friend,&#8221; Police Chief Ashley Weaver said. &#8220;We&#8217;re trying to get 200 units of blood today, and of course, once you donate or even if you come out and something happens and you can&#8217;t donate today, you can still vote for police or fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<a data-ylk=\"slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WNCT.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wnct.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WNCT.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) &#8212; Jacksonville&#8217;s Fire and Police departments are competing head-to-head for votes in this year&#8217;s &#8216;Battle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[16819,99357,116,118,117,60834],"class_list":["post-382843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-battle-of-the-badges","tag-blood-drive","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-wnct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}