Cop catches woman shoplifting, buys groceries for her

[moviedoors]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlin...-groceries-for-woman-caught-shoplifting-food/

A struggling Florida mom who was caught trying to shoplift hundreds of dollars of groceries ended up with food and a ride home from a kind-hearted police officer, instead of a ride to the stationhouse.
When Miami-Dade Police Officer Vicki Thomas, 55, was dispatched to look into a shoplifting case at a Publix grocery store, a store manager led her to Jessica Robles.
“She was crying. I said, ‘Okay, what did she take?’ And he pointed to a grocery cart that was full of groceries,” Thomas told ABCNews.com. “I’ve been on [the job] 23 years, and I went, wow.”
“She just filled up the grocery cart and she just walked out, which shocked me and I asked her, ‘Why?’” Thomas recalled. “She said, ‘My children were hungry.’ And that immediately impacted me.”
Thomas said Robles told her through tears, “I’d love to be able to tell you I’ll never do this again, but I can’t because my children are hungry.”
“My grandchildren flashed before my eyes,” Thomas said. “I knew at that time what I was going to do. I knew I was going to buy her groceries.”
Thomas and her partner took the woman to their car, completed her paperwork and then Thomas asked her to wait a few minutes.
“I grabbed my debit card, ran back into the store and bought things that would sustain her for a week or so and when I walked out she saw that I had the cart of groceries and she burst out in tears and asked if she could hug me, which is kind of unusual for the suspect to be hugging the officer,” Thomas said with a laugh. “I let her hug me.”
Thomas made it clear that she technically arrested Robles. The woman had no priors for shoplifting and since the amount of goods she tried to steal amounted to just under $300, the cut-off for a misdemeanor, it was up to Thomas’ discretion whether to arrest her or give her the misdemeanor and get a promise to appear in court. She chose the latter.
The woman didn’t have a car, so Thomas loaded the $100 worth of groceries into the police car and the officers gave her a ride home.
“I’m a full-service cop,” Thomas joked.
At Robles’ house, Thomas met two of her three children.
“She went into the house and said, ‘Come outside. The officer bought us groceries,’” Thomas said. “They came outside and they were helping us bring the groceries in, going through the bags asking, ‘Can I eat this? Can I have that?’”
“I honestly didn’t know the magnitude of how bad it was until later,” she said. “We got the groceries in and I got back in my car and took the next call.”
Robles could not be reached for comment.
Thomas hesitantly admitted that she has done good deeds for people she encounters on the job “a lot,” such as buying meals, but admitted this was an unusual case. She said it’s not uncommon for police to go above and beyond their required duties.
She recalled an incident where her sergeant arrested a woman’s husband for domestic violence and the woman didn’t have any gas in her car to go to her mother’s house. The sergeant put $80 of gas in the car.
“We do it silently,” Thomas said. “The victims know and I figure she’s the one that mattered. I just don’t normally buy subjects groceries.”

We don't have to only post doom-and-gloom police stories.

 

[Teelie]

She is one of the seemingly few police officers in the news today who don't give every other cop a bad name. It's just too bad she's seemingly in the minority here.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

I saw this yesterday on Facebook too, really glad to see some cops do take their communities as more than a paycheck

 

[moviedoors]

She is one of the seemingly few police officers in the news today who don't give every other cop a bad name. It's just too bad she's seemingly in the minority here.

It's really not that hard to find stories of good cops if you broaden your scope and actually try to find them. It's easy to find stories about corrupt "_____" if that's all you're looking for.

We need a bigger injection of positive, life-affirming stories here. Lately all I see is the negative stories. Can we really blame the media for feeding us negativity if that's apparently what we're hungry for?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The good stories hardly get the media attention they deserve. I'd say at least 80-90% of cops all over America are good people just trying to do their jobs. I post stuff on the bad ones to bring attention to the guys bringing shame to their jobs and hopefully some public outcry will reign in some of the ones thinking about making bad decisions

 

[NickNitro]

Thank the Lord, keep these stories coming

 

[Teelie]

The media shapes perception and the media loves to show the negative, dark side of the world because it sells papers. Occasionally they throw us a bone with an "uplifting" story like this but often it's only to offset all the negative **** they spin.

It's a chicken and egg scenario too. They feed us negative stories, we become accustomed to it and we see less positive stories. I'd much rather see positive stories in the news more frequently than negative ones but I also don't want the negative, crime-exposing stories to disappear. It is harder to find the positive than the negative.

I know those cops exist and most cops are somewhere in the middle ground or are good but it's the corrupt cops, the ones who abuse their power we should be dealing with. They should be exposed for their crimes instead of having their fellow law enforcement covering for them.

There are more corrupt cops than people realize, even if it isn't as malignant as it appears, they still exist and they still get away with crimes of their own and the majority of people don't realize it.

 

[moviedoors]

The media shapes perception and the media loves to show the negative, dark side of the world because it sells papers. Occasionally they throw us a bone with an "uplifting" story like this but often it's only to offset all the negative **** they spin.

I don't think that's entirely honest. While there is truth there, I think it's also true, generally speaking, that we love the opportunity to feel righteously angry. We jump at the chance to mount our high horses and bemoan the things that upset us. We, as consumers of the media, are not innocent of having an appetite for this stuff. The media didn't create this urge. It is innately there and we have to be adult enough to recognize our own dark urges and our own place in this cycle. Just look at the front page of the community hype. The media didn't make us post all those stories. We are choosing to wallow in negativity. Of course there's a balance, but I don't see us striking it.

 

[Teelie]

Have you ever studied or read about journalistic history? It's full of the sensational and the exaggerated. They've exploited the outrageous for their own profits for decades if not centuries. Sometimes it was a positive thing, sometimes negative but they always hyped it up. Now they have streamlined that process into using negative stories they pump up to get people angry over. It's easier to make people angry over something and keep a lasting effect than it is to tell a positive story and have a diminishing effect. With a negative story you can keep fueling that fire. When something good happens, it's done and over with, so far as the media is concerned.

 

[Breogan]

It would have made for a better dramatic and uhm miserable story if she'd arrested, imprisoned her for years, and then obsessively hunted her down for the rest of her life.
But this story was sweet too.

 

[moviedoors]

Have you ever studied or read about journalistic history? It's full of the sensational and the exaggerated. They've exploited the outrageous for their own profits for decades if not centuries. Sometimes it was a positive thing, sometimes negative but they always hyped it up. Now they have streamlined that process into using negative stories they pump up to get people angry over. It's easier to make people angry over something and keep a lasting effect than it is to tell a positive story and have a diminishing effect. With a negative story you can keep fueling that fire. When something good happens, it's done and over with, so far as the media is concerned.

Yeah, we've always had an appetite for the macabre. I'm not gonna blame it all on the media. It's a human failing.

 

[Teelie]

The media though should have a responsibility to not sensationalize and promote it.

 

[moviedoors]

So why all the reposts and the pages long discussions filled with self-righteous indignation? I don't see how that isn't also promoting sensationalism. In fact, that is exactly what it is.

I never said the media were blameless. I'm just tired of people on these boards, who eat this **** up, taking no responsibility for their own dark appetites.

 

[Teelie]

Or perhaps you're seeing it from your own perspective. Perhaps you've forgotten this is a board about super heroes and that people who like them tend to not like people who abuse the law and abuse others? There are a lot of stories here too of people doing positive things... which ironically this thread was until it was derailed into let's talk about all the negativity.

 

[moviedoors]

Or perhaps you're seeing it from your own perspective. Perhaps you've forgotten this is a board about super heroes and that people who like them tend to not like people who abuse the law and abuse others? There are a lot of stories here too of people doing positive things... which ironically this thread was until it was derailed into let's talk about all the negativity.

Then I guess the media's doing a good thing then, isn't it?

 

[Teelie]

They've had decades of honing their craft.

 

[moviedoors]

Back to the story.

It isn't in the story I posted, but after the media attention, the woman received an additional $700 in donations for the community and was offered, and accepted, a part time job in customer service.

 

[Teelie]

It's too bad the additional news hasn't been reprinted as widely. A lot of people talk about helping others but you rarely hear about them actually doing so. It should be encouraged and the extra help she got should be acknowledged.