Police officers' touching act for homeless man outside Woolworths
A pair of Melbourne police officers have been filmed performing a selfless act for a man outside a Woolworths store.
The duo were captured by popular blogger Adele Barbaro on Sunday during an evening trip to the supermarket which she "rugged up" for due to the cold.
In a post to Facebook, Ms Barbaro recalled seeing the officers approach a homeless man who was sitting at the retailer's entrance with a sign asking shoppers for spare change.
Instead of asking the man to move on, she said one of them asked, "What brings you out in the cold tonight mate?"
Ms Barbaro overheard them as she entered the store telling the man, "We just wanna make sure your OK mate".
Before long, she clocked the officers inside the store, picking out items she initially thought were for their dinner.
"I saw the two officers inside with a hot roast chook and some bread rolls and figured they were getting themselves late shift dinner," her post read.
"But then I noticed staples like rice and cereal and one of the said ‘we probably need to get him some milk too'."
Ms Barbaro said it was then that it occurred to her that the officers were shopping for the homeless man.
"We ended up at the checkout at the same time, they had split up and seemed to do half the groceries each and both pulled out wallets/purses to pay half each," she wrote.
She went further to suggest the cops knew instinctively the man was in genuine need of food and wasn't a scammer.
"These two weren’t rookies, they clearly knew the difference between a scammer and someone who was genuinely hungry," she wrote.
"As they went outside, I overhead them check again that he had somewhere to stay tonight and then they handed him the bag of food with respect, compassion and kindness."
The post was quick to go viral and has received more than 2000 comments since being uploaded, many praising the officers' kind gesture.
"This is the kind of police video that should be shared around, showing they aren't all bad and some are genuinely in their job to keep us safe and protect us," one comment read.
"This sort of compassion deserves recognition by their superiors," another wrote.
"I wish these stories were heard of more. We hear of the bad cops and the stories of brutality but not the positive stories of police where they are compassionate and care about the civilians in the community," a third said.
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