Huntington Beach Police Officers Zach Pricer and Scott Marsh were responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle on March 30, when they realized it belonged to a homeless child and her mother.
The little girl was 11-years-old and her and her mother had been living out of the car. Officer Pricer wanted to distract the little girl and make her feel comfortable while Officer Marsh contacted the department’s homeless task force for arrange for housing, so he decided to play a game of hopscotch.
Officer Marsh caught their sweet game ‘copscotch,’ that they like to call it on camera, and the Huntington Beach Police Department posted the video to their Facebook.
“I had to check the welfare of the little girl, so I have to earn her trust and get her comfortable with me first,” Pricer told ABC News. He explained that he’s used other games and toys like Nerf guns as “ice breakers” to gain children’s trust.
Officer Pricer successfully distracted the little girl who seemed to be having a great time. Pricer said that once the 11-year-old started talking, he was “blown away by her intelligence and happy-go-lucky attitude.”
“She was very gracious,” the officer said. “Despite having nearly nothing, she was offering to me everything she had to play with. She showed me her bubbles and her little pink shoes that were falling apart but that she still loved. It was amazing to see how thankful she was for what she did have.”
The police department’s housing task force is currently working on plans to help get the girl and her mother into a housing agreement.
Officer Pricer says, “And I just want to say that this is the kind of thing a lot of cops in communities across the country do every day,” he added. “It just so happened my buddy was messing around and happened to capture it on film.”
Watch this sweet game of ‘copscotch’ below and please SHARE it with your friends and family on Facebook!
Are you surprised to hear officers love hopscotch? Let us know in the comments!
[Featured Image Credit: Facebook- Huntington Beach Police Department]
Police Officer Jumps To Help 11-Year-Old Homeless Girl Living Out Of Car is an article from: LifeDaily