Gregory Barnes Jr. was speeding in his hometown of Muncie, Indiana. Then a patrol car pulled up behind him.
Officer Shawn Cosgrove pulled him over to give him a ticket, but something else happened too. Officer Shawn was courteous and respectful, as was Barnes Jr.
It may be surprising to some, but many cops go above and beyond the call of duty — just this week a cop took a homeless mother and her kids on a shopping spree.
Barnes took a selfie with the cop and posted it along with this thoughtful message. Since then it has been shared nearly half a million times.
“I was pulled over today for speeding. The officer did not know me nor did I know him, but we each showed one another a mutual display of respect in our interaction. He was doing his job, and I had made a mistake in trying to hurry home to get started moving that lead to our path’s crossing.
He ran my information, and in the end we talked more about how are individual days were going, and the situations and circumstances within our society that have lead to interactions such as he and I's to play out much more negatively, some even deadly, than ours, than we talked about the situation that lead to him pulling me over. In the end we both thanked each other for our mutual displays of respect and agreed to take a "selfie" together to help tell our story.
I can't stress enough that NO demographic and/or profession of people are all bad. Neither of us are the enemy. We can continue to fight against each other until we are literally "black and blue", or we can show one another the respect we inherently deserve, not as "black man" and "blue police officer," but as humans. None greater, none less…#Respect"
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