After the cops arrived to arrest a shoplifter, what happened next was very surprising, to say the least. You will be shocked…
A New York Dollar Tree store called the police so that they could handle an individual who had been spotted shoplifting. When the cops arrived, the bodycam footage showed how they confronted the subject, their camera footage capturing everything as it unfolded.
Officers Jason Velez and Chris Cartwright with the Mount Vernon Police Department responded to the call from the Dollar Tree store in Mount Vernon in upstate New York. According to the call, the man had been trying to shoplift from the store on Sunday afternoon. The man will still on the premises when the police arrived, but he was “upfront” and “honest” with them.
When he was confronted by the cops, the shoplifting suspect admitted that he was in dire need of socks and he was attempting to steal multiple pairs. Police body cam depicted the confrontation, but the way that the two officers responded garnered them both praise and applause from their own department and social media users alike.
The man calmly explained that he was homeless and in need of the socks that he was pilfering, according to the Blaze. The cops had every reason to put the man in handcuffs, but they opted for a more compassionate response: one man offered to buy the man a dozen pairs of socks as long as agreed that he would not steal any longer.
“Soon as we went up up, he gave me the look: you got me. He was honest, upfront, rolled with it,” Officer Cartwright recalled. They patted the man down to make sure he hadn’t taken anything else, and after speaking with the store manager, they all agreed that the best approach was to simply get the man some socks.
“You’re a little light on some socks?” Cartwright is heard questioning the man in the footage. He is also heard asking the suspect where he was staying, to which the man replies that he is only “walking around.” Cartwright decided to show some compassion. “All right, I’ll tell you what,” the officer continued, “I’ll buy you a couple [of] pairs of socks though, but you gotta stop stealing. Fair enough?”
The cop then turned to the store clerk, asking him how much the socks were, and after he learned that they were only $1 per pair he asked the clerk to ring him up for 15 of them.
“Listen, I know how important it is to have a nice pair of socks, especially when you’re out running around and, you know, you got nothing else going on, so we’ll get you taken care of,” Cartwright told him, adding, “If you weren’t honest, I wouldn’t have bought them for you.”
The police said that they were merely “de-escalating the situation” but it struck a cord not only with the store manager but also the locals and those on social media as well.
“I love this so much! It really touched me,” a social media user wrote, explaining that she eagerly showed it to her 9-year-old son. “He was becoming disillusioned about the role of police officers lately. We just watched the clip together. I was so incredibly proud to show him what our Mount Vernon Police Officers are doing. Thank you Officers Cartright and Velez!! My son has a bit of renewed faith in police officers because of what you did. A little bit of kindness really goes a long way.” I couldn’t have said it any better.
