It doesn’t take much to get those sweaty palms going and that heartbeat rate running. A flashing blue light and a tall and bulky police officer will do the trick, especially when you’re on the road. But what happens, when you’re pulled over even when you least expect it?
She wiped her hands on her thigh. She was nervous. Sure, she had met a police officer before, but she had never been pulled over. Before stepping out of her vehicle, she turned off Betsy’s engine. But this police officer had an eye for detail. Neither of them expected this to unfold.
Chy-Niece Thacker was on her way to a job interview one day when she suddenly saw blue lights flashing in her rearview mirror asking for her to pull over. She was immediately stressed at the thought of having to deal with a police officer.
But when Officer Jenkins arrived next to her car, he was not at all aggressive toward her. He calmly told her that her brake lights were out. Thacker thought she was going to get a fine and have to deal with repair costs, but what he said next was completely unexpected.
Thacker had replaced her brake lights just a month prior and explained to Jenkins that Firestone had wanted to charge her a ridiculous $600 just to run a test on the car’s wiring.
Jenkins gave her a look that indicated that he agreed that was an exorbitant amount of money and told Thacker to pop the trunk.
He checked the lights inside the trunk and tapped them to no avail. Then he asked her to pop the hood, and checked the relay box, asking her to keep an eye on the lights to make sure they were coming on.
“He could have easily given me a ticket, but Officer Jenkins stepped out of officer role and into mechanic role to make sure I was straight,” Thacker said of the officer’s wonderful actions.
Thacker was incredibly grateful that rather than punishing her for something it would have been difficult for her to have known about in the first place, he had stepped up to help her.
“He is a blessing,” she wrote on Facebook about Officer Jenkins.
As thousands read her story, it went viral. More than 470,000 likes and 190,000 shares later, people were overjoyed to hear about the officer’s kindness.
For all the criticism they get, most police officers really are good people.
After all, the majority of them joined the force to make a positive change in the world, and they did so comfortable in the knowledge that any given shift might put their life at risk.
Source: AWM