By Brett Gillin
The latest viral trend shooting across social media isn’t “cute animal” related, has nothing to do with bacon and won’t let you know which Disney princess you really are. Instead, the thing taking the internet by storm involves a police officer doing something that’s not really that extraordinary: holding a child. But when the photo is paired with the story behind it, it’s pretty easy to see why people are fawning over the pictures.
Two officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department were called out to respond to a domestic situation that had sprung up between two neighbors. Officers Jarka and Chomicki responded to the call, and after hearing both sides of the disagreement, they were able to resolve the dispute without issuing tickets or putting anyone in cuffs. Instead, they were able to solve it the old-fashioned way: with a handshake between the feuding neighbors.
According to this story on WCNC.com, something quite interesting happened while the officers were resolving the situation. One of the disputing neighbors was holding his infant child in his arms while the officers were talking to them. Suddenly, the little girl signaled to her father that she wanted to go see Officer Chomicki. This shocked the father.
The father explained to reporters that his daughter didn’t even like being held by family members, so the fact that she wanted a total stranger to pick her up floored him. So Officer Chomicki obliged the little girl and held her while he and Officer Jarka wrapped up the disagreement.
After the feuding neighbors settled their disagreement, the infant’s father asked Officer Chomicki if he could take a picture of him holding his daughter. Chomicki gladly obliged, but that wasn’t all. The father then asked for another picture with the three of them together. As you can see on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s official Facebook page, the second picture features Chomicki, the daughter, and the father holding up a peace sign.
In his own words, the father told reporters that he wanted to hold up a peace sign because “Peace equals Police.” To date, the pictures have been shared nearly 10,000 times and more than 33,000 people took the time to “Like” them on the popular social media site.
