Church Has Homeless Man Arrested For Stealing $2.25 Worth Of Cookies
Poverty and homelessness are issues best dealt with in some long format, print issue magazine style article. I couldn’t even begin to tackle that debate right now, and so I won’t even try. Instead, here’s a story from The Palm Beach Post about how a homeless man was arrested due to some delicious cookies.
It’s late August, and the police are called to First Baptist Church of Royal Palm Beach. The man they see sitting outside entered the church looking for assistance. What he found was an unguarded cookie jar, and so he helped himself. After being greeted by a custodian, who may have understandably been freaked out, the police were called and the homeless man was carted off to jail.
After a bit of chatting amongst the cops and church members, the church decided that it would be pressing charges for the $2.25 worth of cookies stolen by the homeless man. As reported by The Independent, church officials had the following to say:
The young man appeared to be under the influence. Since he was wandering around the neighborhood, the officer suggested the best course may be to press charges for the incident which would enter the young man into the system where he could find help.
The church staff member[s] agreed. Although our church partners with PBSO to provide hundreds of meals for needy families, this time we agreed with the officer’s suggestion that the young man needed more help than just a free meal. We have contacts with rehabilitation programs. We do refer individuals to such programs and in retrospect we might have done so with this individual.”
