When some police officers witness injustice, they set out to uphold the law and set things right. While walking through a park in socks without shoes isn’t against the law, police officers in Tukwila, Washington couldn’t bear to see such an injustice.
So they sought to set things right.
A pair of police officers from the Tukwila Police Department were on patrol when they came across a young boy walking through the park in a pair of torn and dirty socks.
One of the child’s feet were bleeding. So, the officers, who were referred to as “Sergeant Modest” and “Officer Bashful” on the department’s Facebook page because of their wish to remain anonymous, decided to help the boy.
They grabbed their first aid kit and patched the boy’s foot up.
The officers asked the boy where his shoes were and he told them that he didn’t have any since he had outgrown his only pair.
“Sooo…Sergeant Modest and Officer Bashful (names have been changed to protect their bashfulness) were patrolling on foot at Cascade View Park yesterday afternoon,” Tukwila Police Department’s Facebook page explained. “They came across this guy running around in torn dirty socks and bleeding from a decent sized cut on the bottom of his foot. The sergeant cleaned up and patched his foot with his first aid kit. When asked where his shoes were, their new friend told them that he didn’t have any shoes because the pair he had was too small for his feet to fit in.”
The officers were heartbroken by this and set out to make it right.
“The sergeant ran out and grabbed a pair of shoes for him while the officer kept him and his friends company. He came back with not only a pair of shoes, but also with a bunch of popsicles because what isn’t better than a cold popsicle on a hot summer day?! The officer helped to tie his new friend’s shoes and they all enjoyed a popsicle together before parting ways,” the post said.
And this isn’t the first time Sergeant Modest has helped out one of the needy residents of his town.
His police department says he has done so on multiple occasions and has bought shoes for a homeless man he saw limping in the street because his shoes had no soles.
The Tukwila Police Department said that this act of kindness is the kind of thing that police officers all over the country do every day.
“It is representative of the small acts of kindness that occur daily between police officers and members of the communities that they serve nationwide,” the police department’s post said. “A small gesture such as this one or the countless other gestures of kindness that officers do daily goes a long way towards building rapport and trust with every member of the community regardless of their socioeconomic status. We are a part of the community that we serve and are proud to have such amazing men and women in our ranks that truly care so much about those that they serve.”
Tukwila police spokesman Victor Masters told Seattle Patch that there was no abuse or neglect suspected on behalf of the parents.
“It was mainly a case of a child that did not have basic everyday necessities that many of us take for granted,” he said.
Unfortunately, this is all too common in the Tukwila School District where 12 percent of the students are homeless.
“As a region, we have seen housing and cost-of-living rates go up drastically over the past 10 years,” Masters told Yahoo. “As a result, more people are having to get by with less to cover the rising costs of living. Our officers encounter people in need, people in mental crisis and those that struggle to get by daily.”
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