Hundreds of participants packed into Dorchester’s Boston Bowl for the 3rd annual LLEGO Boston (Latino Law Enforcement Group of Boston) Women’s History Month bowling fundraiser.

Formed in 2017, LLEGO is a group of Latino police officers from the Boston Police (BPD), Boston Fire (BFD), corrections institutions, security companies and college/university campuses. It has grown steadily, and its Women’s History event has expanded over the last 3 years from 10 teams to 32 teams this year. All of the participating bowling teams fundraise for the charity of their choice, as long as it is a women-led, or women-focused, non-profit in the area.

Teams of police officers, community members, and elected officials pulled out all the stops on Sunday and had plenty of strikes and spares to report on their scorecards.

LLEGO founder Jose Ruiz, President David Hernandez, and civilian financial advisor Eric Rivas.

LLEGO President David Hernandez, a sergeant in the BPD, said the organization has its volunteers run everything from girls winter softball and T-ball training in Dorchester to a pre-Police Academy Training program to help recruit and prepare those in the community for a law enforcement career. The program, he said, has grown from 15 people per class to 100 per class, with 50 percent of them women, 85 percent people of color.

“A thing that makes us unique is that our board is comprised of officers and community members,” he said. “This really helps us stay level-headed and keep in step with what the community wants and is asking for.”

Hernandez said the narrative that no one wants to be a police officer is something they are changing, and it’s something he has overcome himself. As a young man, he witnessed his father get arrested by mistake and put in a chokehold in front of their Roslindale home by an undercover drug unit– an incident that caused him to intervene in the struggle and chaos. It left him frustrated, he said, but it didn’t lead him to go to war with police; he wanted to make things better.

That, he said, is the spirit behind LLEGO Boston’s work within police organizations and within the communities they serve. “We’re about solutions for the community,” he said. “That was a big motivation for me; I wanted a solution and to work for change from within.”