Officer Ridiculed For Helping Homeless Woman (could be reprimanded??)

[The Straight Story]

Officer Ridiculed For Helping Homeless Woman
Man Drives Cruiser While Pulling Shopping Cart 12 Miles

POSTED: 11:39 am EST January 16, 2007

BRADENTON, Fla. -- A city police officer is being simultaneously celebrated and ridiculed after he went out of his way to save a homeless woman's shopping cart full of possessions.

After arresting Marie Brooks on an outstanding warrant early one morning last week, Officer Nicholas Evans pulled her shopping cart alongside his police cruiser for 12 miles to the county jail so Brooks wouldn't lose her meager belongings. The trip took him an hour.

"He wasn't obligated to have a generous, spiritual heart," said Mary DeLazzer, who manages Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen in Bradenton.
Click here to find out more!

But police are looking into whether Evans acted inappropriately and should be reprimanded. The act has made Evans the butt of jokes among peers who have heard the story, which was posted on a popular police Web site.

http://www.local6.com/news/10760917/detail.html

[Caoimhe]

1. GOD FORBID he help save this woman's earthly possessions

Maybe firefighters should stop putting out house fires now too, since those are just possessions.

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. A policeman who actually cares about people?

What is this world coming to?

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. Maybe DU should send him flowers

Seems a good cop is hard to find these days. Maybe he should be rewarded.

[EFerrari]

5. Or, we could send donations to that soup kitchen in his name.

[BlooInBloo]

21. But DUers like the cops that taser people... What a wacky place. I'll chip in for this cop!

[seabeyond]

26. i will chip in for hte cop too. lets do it. as a community, comunicate what is

important to us, with our police. reward them when they do right. support them. i agree.

are we doing anything

i am not a good organizer.

[ThomCat]

3. This says a lot about the police.

One good cop actually shows some courtesy and respect, and he's getting dumped on by other cops. x(

[EFerrari]

4. I wonder if that is the same "popular site" that advocated attacking

Cindy Sheehan physically.

Disgusting.

[Warpy]

6. Nobody would reprimand him if the property

had been a couple of suitcases removed from a drunken yuppie's car after a wreck.

That he's being ridiculed is sickening. The cops who should be disciplined are the ones who think he's a sucker.

"To protect and serve," my flabby, pasty old ass.

[Phredicles]

13. Hear, hear - Evans is a hero; the ones riding his ass are pricks.

This should be a heart-warming story, not a sad one; nice going, losers.:grr:

[Horse with no Name]

7. "To Protect and to Serve"

Thank you Officer Evans for upholding your oath.

On edit:
When they arrest someone who is driving, they don't leave the cars on the side of the road because they could be vandalized and the police department might be held responsible.
This officer was in a predicament. This woman's entire life (which was much important than a car) was in this basket.
To leave it behind would have been a travesty.

[Ilsa]

8. This is what the 1980's have brought us: disdain for the poor, the

mentally/emotionally broken, and those who would lift a finger to help them. Thank you, Ronnie Raygun, for undoing federal assistance for mental institutions and starting us down this path of hating people who don't hurt anyone.

[JuniperLea]

12. BEST.POST.EVER!

You nailed it, Ilsa. I work in downtown Los Angeles and I see more than my fair share of homeless. When you talk to them, it's painfully obvious they need some medication and a safe, warm, clean place to stay.

But no. The rich needed that money far more than these poor people. Let them eat and piss and sleep in the street. Why bother our beautiful minds over them. They don't know how bad off they are so, really, they are doing much better than we think.

:cry:

[Ilsa]

27. Aw shucks, thank you. I don't have a way with words, but

sometimes I get so frustrated and angry that I spill whats overflowing in my heart, and somehow I managed to fight through the emotion and write words instead of curse!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. I can only wonder

if there would have been a problem if he'd taken care of the possessions of a rich person who was arrested on an outstanding warrant....kudos to the officer for doing this kind act.

[seabeyond]

10. my 9 yr old son told me some police are nice. i told him i am glad he can feel that

i do not so much. i have had a handful of experience where i do not see the police are so nice. i did have one expereince with a nice cop and this is the experience that stays with my son. good for him. was a pretty long conversation this morning on the way to school, about how hard the job is they do and all, and the reasons they are as they are.....

i will share this story with him. he will also gain a lesson that in the police doing something kind, something he so wants to see in our police, is being punished.....

maybe he will write a letter to this police force. thanking them for having a police officer that is still able to follow his heart in kindness, still has the ability ....

[EFerrari]

11. If you want to donate to Our Daily Bread soup kitchen in Officer Evans name

send donations to: PO Box 9544, Bradenton FL 34205.

Please don't send to their physical address on 14th Street as they prefer not to recieve $ there.

:hi:

/oops

[WorseBeforeBetter]

14. Great idea.

In his name and from a member of DU.

Somehow I see this story making it onto Countdown.

[jwirr]

15. Thank you.

[Beaverhausen]

18. thanks for that!

:hi:

[EFerrari]

20. Direct action, baby.

lol

:)

[MadHound]

16. Another sad example of the mindset predominant in law enforcement today

No longer does a sense of duty and protection motivate these people. They are in it for the power rush they feel, and god forbid if a fellow officer takes any sort of human, caring action, they are ridiculed and rebuked.

And the public at large wonders why the police are distrusted and reviled by large segments of our population:eyes:

[EFerrari]

17. Well, they have to deal on a daily basis with the problems

that have been dumped out of social services - mental illness, poverty, addiction AND do their law enforcement job, too. I couldn't do it.

[MadHound]

24. No excuse, sorry.

Many other professions have had to deal with the same sort of fallout from the same sources, and you don't see them radically transforming their ethics, morals and practices. Teachers, firefighters, EMTs, hospital workers, on and on, and yet all of these professionals seem to maintain their moral center. What's different about police:shrug:

And besides, this transformation started long before Reagan's slashing of social services. I started seeing this happen at the end of the sixties, early seventies.

[EFerrari]

25. You think so? Maybe I'm out of touch. The pros you name

seem just as stressed out to me -- and that means, sometimes reacting badly -- as my local cops.

I don't mean to excuse @ssholes, MadHound. They can take their criticism and like it.

[sakabatou]

19. The hell?

[EFerrari]

23. Kick