The Washington Post | November 29 2012
Jennifer Foster, of Florence, Ariz., was visiting New York with her boyfriend on Nov. 14, when she came across the shoeless man asking for change in Times Square.
It was posted Tuesday night to the NYPD’s official Facebook page and became an instant hit. More than 410,000 users “liked” it as of Thursday evening, and more than 100,000 shared it.
Thousands of people commented, including one person who praised him as “An officer AND a Gentleman.”
The photo shows the officer kneeling beside the man with the boots at his feet. A shoe store is seen in the background.
The NYPD Facebook page on Thursday posted a comment from DePrimo saying, “I didn’t think anything of it,” and updated it with a photo of DePrimo taken in 2011.
“I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let’s put them on and take care of you,” Foster quoted DePrimo as saying to the homeless man.
She wrote: “The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man. The officer expected NOTHING in return and did not know I was watching.”
Foster, who is a dispatch manager at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, said she’s worked in law enforcement for 17 years and has never been more impressed.
“His presentation of human kindness has not been lost on myself or any of the Arizona law enforcement officials with whom this story has been shared,” Foster wrote on Facebook. She said she never got the officer’s name.
“I was just doing my job,” DePrimo told reporters later Thursday.
When asked about spending his own money on the boots, DePrimo said, “You just don’t think about things like that.”
He said the night was really cold and he was wearing two pairs of socks and combat boots.
“My feet were still freezing,” said DePrimo, who was clutching cufflinks he had just gotten from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
DePrimo is assigned to the Sixth Precinct, encompassing Greenwich Village and the West Village, and lives on Long Island. He told Newsday that the homeless man “smiled from ear to ear” after getting the boots.
“It was like you gave him a million dollars,” he added.
He told The New York Times that he keeps the receipt for the boots in his vest to remind him “that sometimes people have it worse.”
I dream of this new world every day !
One day ! One day half of humanity will awaking to who we are , what we are ,where we come from and realize there is no separation after all.
we will live in harmony ,Welcome to the New earth to come .
Blessing my Brother.
Another Point Of You.
Hi Chantal, I know what you mean. This is a truly beautiful demonstration of fellow feeling and compassionate love, from a NYPD cop no less. There’s hope for humanity after all. Blessings, G
This is what I am dreaming to see more and more, and more…
When instead of talking, teaching or preaching – they are acting!
HE IS A TRUE TEACHER, A WAYSHOWER!!!!
And we need more HUEmans like him.
I’m sending him my blessings and beams of LOVE, and I bow before HIM!!!
Hi Hye! I know what you mean. He is indeed and in deed a “true teacher, a wayshower.” Thanks for commenting. Blessings. G