US officer shows the 'human behind the badge" as he pays for milk that a hard-up father was accused of stealing. An alleged shoplifter has been released without charge after an officer bought the powdered milk he was accused of stealing for his young son.
Officer Justin Roby (pictured), from Kentucky refused to detain the man on the grounds that it wouldn't "have done any good for him".
The London Police Department officer is also a father himself and said that the incident illustrated some of the ethical decisions police are faced with in their duty to uphold the law.
He said: "I think when [people] look at us, they see the uniform and the car, the tools we have on our belt.
"But behind the uniform, I'm a human being and I'm a person out in this community just like any of them. I have a little boy. I'm a father just like that gentleman was.
"We're not robots, there's a human behind the badge."
When called to the supermarket to deal with the incident on January 17, he was faced with the single dad and decided to pay for the item he was accused of stealing for his six-month-old son.
He then referred the man, who had fallen upon hard times, to social welfare organisations, including his own police force to try and give him a helping hand.
Officer Roby told WKYT: "He's already short on money, can't afford formula, so me making him appear in court he's still not going to have any food for that baby.
"As a police officer, it's not black and white for us, there's a lot of grey and you have to cipher through everything and you really need to figure out the whole story."
Article courtesy of Scott Docherty - www.policeoracle.com
2 comments:
This is not so rare as it is painted. Police officers regularly use their common sense virtually every tour of duty. Sadly, it does not often make the news headlines as the media prefer to report the odd bad example of policing rather than the multitude of acts of human kindness; as brilliantly illustrated by this officer.
When serving it always irritated me that the media would constantly give wide coverage to the statistics concerning complaints against the police but rarely, if ever, mentioned the vastly outnumbered letters of gratitude and praise received from members of the public for the helpful assistance, often above and beyond their duty of care, performed by police officers 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Hopefully, articles such as this one will help to rebalance the bias we have come to expect from our so called free press and media.
I agree with Old Plod actually, you do hear a lot about complaints about the police and not so much the good stuff.
Well done to that police officer,he did the right thing.
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