NYPD officers pay for woman’s stolen food instead of arresting her

Often times when police officers are in the news, it’s not for a good reason. So let’s take a moment to celebrate these three NYPD officers who were recognized for their act of kindness in 2019.

It was Fourth of July in 2019, when three police officers walked into a Whole Foods in Manhattan. As they walked inside the store a security guard informed them that a woman just tried to shoplift.

“I asked her, ‘What’s going on?’ She told me she was hungry,” Lt. Louis Sojo said.

Sojo, who was at the store with Officers Esnaidy Cuevas and Michael Rivera, looked at the woman’s bag and decided to make her day.

“At that moment, she was extremely emotional,” Sojo said, according to CBS News. “She did thank us, but she was pretty much speechless at what happened.”

After the officers paid for the woman’s food, Sojo said he didn’t expect to receive so much praise.

“You know, I’ve been doing this for 22 years. This is not the first time I’ve paid for food. This is not the first time they’ve paid for someone’s food,” he said.

“We don’t go out and do it all the time, but, you know, when you look at someone’s face and you notice that they need you, and they’re actually hungry. It’s pretty difficult as a human being to walk away from something like that. We weren’t raised like that. So, it’s the right thing to do.”

Terence A. Monahan, the then-NYPD Chief of Department, even praised the three NYPD officers for their good deed.

Way to set an example! These are the kinds of stories I want to hear about our officers.

Please share if you want to see more stories like this about our officers.

 

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