Samaritan and Firefighter put panhandlers safety first.

[sarcasmo]

Snip< "I assessed the situation," he says. He left the Army in 2006, after two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, but that's still the instinct. You stop, you observe.

If need be, you act.

The sedan, he quickly realized, was a Detroit police car. The man in the wheelchair was an amputee, probably in his 50s or 60s, missing his left leg and right arm. There were two officers in the car — man driving, woman riding shotgun — and the man was on the vehicle's loudspeaker.

"Get the bleep out of the road," Kozlowski heard. "Stop your bleeping begging. You need to hurry up."



Snip< The police car swung around, facing Jefferson against tunnel-bound traffic, and Kozlowski approached the driver's-side window: "Is that so bleeping hard to get him off the road?" The officer barked back, the F-bombs bursting in air. "He's just a bleeping alcoholic," the officer said.

"No," Kozlowski said, "he's a human being. He's got someone, somewhere, who cares about him."

The officer gave Kozlowski five seconds to get back to his SUV. Kozlowski met the deadline. The police car pulled away, he says, and as it did, the officer in the passenger seat flipped him the bird.






http://detroitnews.com/article/20110623/OPINION03/106230424/Samaritan-and-firefighter-put-panhandler%E2%80%99s-safety-first-%E2%80%94-despite-cops