PR Stunt or Not? NYPD Officer Gives Homeless Man Shoes

A photograph of an NYPD officer giving a homeless man shoes, has gone viral.

While this was welcomed by many people, there were (as expected) many skeptics claiming this was a PR stunt to try and soften the NYPD's image.

The NYPD have a bad reputation of racism, corruption and violence and they are also known for their (arguably biased) stop-and-frisk policies...

There are also statistic to prove that their policy isn't even working;

• NYPD finds most gun outside of stop and frisk hotspots; out of more than 685,000 stops in 2011, only about 770 guns were recovered. 'The guns aren't even showing up in the places where the police are devoting the most stop-and-frisk resources'. 

The stop-and-frisk statistics of 2011:

Image source: Huffington Post. 

The outrage:

There is a clear racial bias when it comes to the stop-and-frisk policy of the NYPD (which isn't at all surprising; stop and searches in the UK are also racially biased). I genuinely believe the NYPD are racially profiling people to stop-and-frisk and there is evidence to suggest that:

• Teen's iPod Exposes Violence And Racial Profiling In NYPD's Stop & Frisk Interrogations

PR stunt or not, the homeless man is probably very pleased that he has warm shoes to wear this winter.

And with the way the NYPD has been, I doubt they're too concerned about their image... they're not a 'business' and don't rely on customer satisfaction to stay in business. They're still here because there's a need for a police force.

We really shouldn't forget that are good people out there (yes, even in the NYPD!). This officer may be one good one amongst many bad ones in the force!