photo from www.arkansasonline.com
We’ve been seeing a lot of negative stories about police officers recently.
The media reports the stories that people want to hear (or what the media thinks people want to hear): stories of conflict and rebellion. We read stories about police officers getting shot, but also about the bad apples in the police world.
This leads people to generalize. This leads people to cause an uproar against all police officers and all police departments, or at least that’s how a lot of people paint the picture.
Yes, we’ve heard a lot of stories that put police in a bad light but compare the number of those stories to the number of officers in the US. According to the US Department of Justice, state and local law enforcement agencies employ about 765,000 sworn personnel (defined as those with general arrest powers) as of 2008. And most of those officers are good people who are out to protect and serve us.
It puts it in perspective, doesn’t it?
With that in mind, we wanted to show you just a few stories of good cops doing good things (of which there are so, so many, including this real-life Andy Taylor).
Officer cuts grass for man in wheelchair
photo from photo from www.goodnewsnetwork.org
Officer Joe Hutson saw a man in his wheelchair — trying to cut his grass. So Hutson sent his partner, Officer John Khillah, to pick up a lawn mower, weed wacker, and leaf blower. Then the two policemen got to work cutting the lawn.
Just another day in the life of an officer.
Policeman sits with kids on sidewalk
photo from www.goodnewsnetwork.org
The kids at Amber Watt’s Gigglez and Grinz Daycare get very excited when they see cop cars drive by — the officers are alway so nice and wave at the kids.
But one day, officer Joel Shoihet was driving by the daycare and saw some of the kids sitting outside on the sidewalk. He stopped his car, got out, and sat down next to them. He chatted for a bit, cross-legged.
“This will be a forever memory for these kids, and something I’m sure they will brag about forever,” Amber Watt wrote to the Langley Times. “It was the day they had circle time on the sidewalk with a hero.”
Instead of a ticket, these cops handed out a car seat…
Two police officers, Jason Pavlige and James Hodges, pulled over a car for a minor traffic violation, expecting to hand out a ticket. But once they approached the car, what they saw inside shocked them — a mother with her 10-month-old baby on her lap.
The officers spent a few minutes with this mother, father, and baby. They decided that the best thing for her and her child was a car seat, not a citation. They even went to the store and bought the car seat themselves and installed it for her.
“The father was, I think, almost in shock,” Hodges told ABC News.
