To protect and to serve
by digby
Here's an officer who understands that his job isn't to fight the War of the American Streets and Kill Bad Guys --- it's to ensure public safety. Which isn't the same thing.
A Michigan public safety officer has made good on his promise to protect and serve the people in his community. On Oct. 4, Officer Ben Hall of Emmett Township, Mich., received a call to investigate a car in which, reportedly, an unsecured child was observed. Alexis DeLorenzo and her daughter were riding in this car with a friend. When Hall pulled them over, things didn't go as expected. When Hall walked over to the car, he saw that DeLorenzo's 5-year-old daughter was wearing a seat belt but was not secured in a booster seat. In Michigan, child safety restraints are required for children under the age of 7. "When I spoke to [DeLorenzo], she was very forthcoming and knew that the child should be in a booster seat," Hall said. He added, "She admitted that she was wrong and that she had recently fallen on hard times."
Hall said DeLorenzo told him that her car had been repossessed that day with her daughter's booster seat in it, and she simply couldn't afford a replacement booster seat. Instead of writing DeLorenzo a ticket, Hall decided to address the problem with, to his mind, a more productive solution. "A ticket doesn't solve the situation," Hall told WXMI-TV. "What solves it is the child being in the booster seat like she should be." Hall instructed DeLorenzo to meet him at the local Walmart. There, instead of writing her a ticket, he purchased a booster seat for her. DeLorenzo was overwhelmed by the officer's understanding and compassion. Hall didn't seem fazed; he said, "It was the easiest 50 bucks I ever spent." DeLorenzo made sure that Hall's actions were recognized, posting to the Emmett Township Police Department's website her thanks.
A lot of cops would have chosen to believe she was lying or trying to get away with something. A lot of them wouldn't have cared one way or the other. This officer understood that the important thing was to protect the kid and took a chance that helping her mother do that would be the best way to insure it. There's nothing radical about assuming that helping a mom protect her child is better than making things worse for the mother by punishing her. Or, at least, there shouldn't be.
Good for Officer DeLorenzo for being a decent human being and a smart, empathetic cop. There are many thousands of them in towns and cities across the country and we'd all be better off if they were the models for all the rest.
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