
Police Officers React To Couple Who Refused To Sit By Them
by Michelle Shreeve 1/5/2017
With the recent spotlight on police officers nationwide in the media, a lot of citizens have mixed emotions when it comes to how they feel about the men in blue. Some are confident in them, more now than ever before. Others however, are feeling the exact opposite.
What a lot of officers realize is that when they go out in public, they might just run into people who choose to wear their feelings about them on their sleeve. However, not every situation is easy...
Police officers often eat together when it comes time for them to have their lunch or dinner breaks. It not only keeps them safer, but it also upholds the comradery between them as not only co-workers, but brothers as well. A particular group of officers were eating together at a Waterfront Eat 'n Park restaurant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, when they noticed something about a few customers that came into the restaurant.
The couple that came in was being directed to sit next to the table of police officers, but the man did not seem too happy about their seat placement. At that very moment, the man told the server they were not interested in sitting right next to the officers.
A server from the restaurant, Jesse Meyers, shared his observation of the situation with WTAE:
"A table goes to sit down and the guy looks over at one of the police officers and was like, 'Nah I don't want to sit here.' So they got moved completely opposite, away from the police officers."
Officer Chuck Thomas, noticed how the couple did not want to sit next to them. In fact, he said their reaction was quite obvious. Officer Thomas shared:
"I looked over and said, 'It's okay sir. You won't have to worry about it, we won't hurt you.' He looked at me hard again and said he's not sitting here and walked away."
After that second reaction, and thinking it over for a little bit, Officer Thomas and his partner thought they should do something kind - and pay the couple's bill. They asked their server Jesse to bring them the couple who had shunned them's check. Officer Thomas shared the reasoning behind their decision:
"Essentially the whole goal of it was to let him know that we're not here to hurt you, we're not here for that. We're here for you. We work for the public. And we just want to better the relationship between the community and the police."
The couple couldn't have ever expected that the officers would respond in such a manner. The bill came out to $28.50, and the officers even left Jesse a $10.00 tip. On the receipt of the couple's bill the officers paid, was a note that read:
"Sir, your check was paid for by the police officers that you didn't want to sit next to. Thank you for your support."
Officer Thomas concluded how he felt about this experience with:
"It just dawned on me, I should do this real quick just to show this guy look, I don't know if you had bad experience with the police in the past -- you may have you may have not -- but I just want you to know I never had an experience with you and I'm not here to do anything to you. And neither will my partners."
Stories like this one remind us that police officers are here to protect and serve our communities--not hurt them. Hopefully the couple in this story learned a lesson about not judging a book by it's cover.
Watch this video to learn more about this story.
Some people are forgetting that there are humans behind the uniforms police officers wear. Just like how we (regular citizens) make mistakes, it can happen to police officers too. Remember that we are all on the same side, despite mistakes that some members of the police force, as well as some members of the public, can make from time to time. We are all here, fighting the same fight, trying to better our communities.