Live from America's Better Self: Adam Silverman: And Now for the Other Side of Policing: What You Don’t Hear Much About:
As valued commenter CMM has reminded us in comments to the previous thread, most law enforcement officers are good people that do a lot of good things that don’t get a lot of press attention.
I saw this story earlier this week and had meant to put it up as a late night/early morning feel good open thread, but the events of the past three or four days have overtaken things a bit. So here’s the story:
Police in Barnesville, GA responded to a report of someone sleeping in a tent outside of Barnesville Gordon State College. They found 19 year old Fred Barley who’d come to school early before the start of his sophomore year on his younger brother’s bicycle. From Conyers, GA – a six hour bike ride! He was homeless as the dorms don’t open for another month or so and he was camping out at night while bicycling around looking for a job. While the responding officers couldn’t let him continue to camp out, each of them paid for him to have a night at a local motel. One of the responding officers, Dicky Carreker’s wife posted about Fred on her Facebook post. Donations immediately poured in totaling $70,000 so far, as well as a new, adult sized bike, clothes, shoes, and food. A local restaurant owner created a job for Fred, which he has accepted, and the motel owner is providing lodging for free until Barnesville Gordon State College can get him into the dorms, which they’ve indicated they will do early.
Maybe you heard or saw this story, maybe you didn’t. But given all the negative things we’ve been exposed to over the past two weeks in the news, its important to remember that despite the “it bleeds, it leads” and “controversy creates cash” models of the news media in their pursuit of profit and the fact that with 24/7 news and social media everything negative is amplified and constantly coming at us, that good things, done by good people still happen. Here’s the link to video of Fred Barley thanking everyone in Barnesville for their support.
