Police Get Call from Mentally Ill Woman Crying in Hunger, Officer Shows Up with Grocery Bags
Have you ever wondered about what it takes to make lasting change a reality? If so, you’re not alone.
Answers to that question have populated bookshelves in the self-help sections of Barnes & Noble. But the answer really isn’t all that mysterious.
As singer/songwriter Chris Rice noted in his 2000 song “Magic Wand,” “The only way to really change / Is simple choices everyday.” And that’s an axiom that police departments across the country have taken seriously, winning the hearts of civilians with one simple action after the next.
Consider a case out of Kennesaw, Georgia. According to KSAZ-TV, a shopper named Madison Obrien encountered a frazzled mother at a local Kroger.
As the woman tried to juggle a screeching infant and a recalcitrant toddler, a police officer approached and offered to help her get them safely into the store. Later, Obrien watched the mother sadly tell her older child that she couldn’t get him a toy in the checkout line.
“My heart broke in a million pieces for this sweet boy,” she said after he burst into tears. Apparently, the same was true for the police officer, who proceeded to buy the child his toy.
More than that, he paid for the woman’s entire cart of groceries. That’s far from an isolated incident either.
WREG’s Stephanie Scurlock shared a story on Facebook about how a Memphis police officer made a big impact on one woman’s life.
In 2016, a woman called the Memphis Police Department. She was sobbing, obviously distraught.
It quickly became apparent that she suffered from mental illness and her issue didn’t have anything to do with a crime: She was simply hungry.
A less others-focused department might have simply hung up on her, but Officer Sandlin did something else entirely.
He went to the grocery store, purchased the goods the woman desired, visited her home and put them away for her.
“Let’s celebrate him and all the other officers who #protectandserve,” Scurlock wrote in the photo caption.
Can you think of any better way to change people’s perception of police than that?
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