(Riverton, WY) – Earlier this week, community member Karen Brown posted on social media about the kindness she witnessed toward the transient community in City Park by a Riverton Police Department officer.
Karen’s post was shared by many folks as well as sent to County 10. With her permission to share the story, we tracked down the officer. He asked to remain anonymous but still wanted to share a few thoughts about the situation.
In her post, Karen shared about driving by City Park and seeing “a bunch of them sitting on a park bench with blankets on trying to keep warm.” On her way back, an RPD officer was there with them, and her initial thought was “he was there to chase them off.”
However, when Karen got closer she saw him passing out coffee. She finished the post by saying: “Way to go RPD! I thank you for being kind to them.”
The officer sat down with County 10 and shared the following.
I didn’t do anything spectacular. I want to help my community. I want to take care of the people who are overlooked quite often.
I’m not the only one that does this. There are other officers, organizations like Wind River Cares, and regular citizens out there that check on them. They are the real heroes out there that make the difference in the day-to-day. Those little acts of kindness make their world better. It makes the day better to see them smile.
We [the RPD] care. We are out there, especially during the winter months, checking in with them as much as possible. We do as much as possible to find them places to go and try to utilize as many resources as possible. We have to try and find places for people to go. I encourage anyone to come to do a ridealong with us. People need to come see what we deal with on a daily basis at the Riverton PD. Ridealongs are always welcome. A lot of the negative is all that gets highlighted.
We need to do better as a community to help with providing the services these guys need. They need a little bit of help. They are sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles…they are family. We’ve got to do better by them. They have been overlooked too often. We need to do better by them; they just need a little bit of help.
There is more to our transient community than what people see in passing. All people see is the negative and there is a whole other side to our transient population.
We need to do better and try to help these guys out as much as possible.
-RPD Officer