Cop Quietly Pays For What Family Needs After Shoplifting Bust

Kind cop silently shells out for shoplifting couple’s childcare necessities

It’s been a rough stretch for police officers lately. We don’t need to rehash all the terrible instances where cops have behaved badly to understand that. But despite the constant collection of notorious news items about bad cops, it’s important to remember that most police officers have our best interests in mind. And a lot of the good things they do don’t make the news. In fact, some cops don’t bother telling anyone.

One police officer in Redmond, Washington kept his good deed a secret, but after his supervisor spied the details in a subsequent report, the story is going viral. According to K5 News, after a mom and dad were caught attempting to shoplift some basic childcare necessities, the cop called to the scene ended up quietly taking their items to a cashier and paying for them himself.

The couple has two children, an eight-year-old and a four-month-old, and they were trying to make off with diapers and clothing for their kids. The managers at Target declined to press charges – kindness abounds in this story! – upon which the officer took it upon himself to acquire the items for them, out of his own pocket. He said nothing of it, and the act would have remained under cover, if not for an eagle-eyed supervisor who caught wind of it in the shoplifting report.

The Redmond PD then shared an image of part of the report and tweeted, “Sometimes our officers don’t tell us everything. An attentive supervisor spied this in a recent shoplifting report.”

He clearly didn’t do it for the recognition, and he’s probably happy to remain anonymous; I’m guessing the ensuing attention would probably make him uncomfortable. Good for him. But good for the supervisor who spotted it, and the social media manager at the station for sharing it.

Sometimes the bad news can be overwhelming. It seems most of the stories we hear on the news, in our Facebook feeds, from our neighbors, concern tragedies and controversy and criticism. You hear so much about people being terrible to each other that it can be easy to forget that that’s not always the case. Especially when it comes to stories about people in power abusing their authority.

It’s nice to be reminded, in what feels like a sea of constant negativity, that it’s not all bad out there.