Police officers pay for motel room, help raise $150G for homeless teen who biked 6 hours to college

[grossproffit]

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More than $150,000 dollars have been raised for a Georgia 19-year-old who was found sleeping in a tent outside the gates of his college last weekend.

Fred Barley, who is homeless, was discovered by two police officers responding to a trespassing call near a parking lot at Gordon State College in Barnesville. He told the officers he had ridden his little brother's bicycle six hours to register for classes for his second semester of college.

In addition to the bike, Barley had two duffel bags containing all his wordly possessions and two gallons of water. All he had to eat, according to a report by WSB, was a box of cereal.

"After meeting Fred, I could tell he was a good kid,” Gordon State College Police Officer Dicky Carreker told the Barnesville Herald-Gazette. “He was a young kid who had been dealt a bad hand and was trying to make the best out of it. All he wanted was a job."

Carreker and Barnesville Police Officer Maria Gebelein told Barley he couldn't stay in the tent, but they knew someplace he could stay. The officers brought Barley to a nearby motel and paid for two nights accommodation.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/16/police-officers-pay-for-motel-room-help-raise-150g-for-homeless-teen-who-biked-six-hours-to-college.html

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. Yay

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. Man who walks 16 miles to 2 jobs gets free car

BELMONT, NH (WBIN/CNN) - In just one week, a New Hampshire man’s life changed dramatically after a Facebook post by a stranger went viral.

Kyle Bigler is going to great lengths and distances to earn a living. He has two jobs, one of them working at a Dunkin Donuts. In all, he puts 16 miles on his feet.

"He like knows my coffee, he knows everybody's coffee. You just walk in and he's so personable and he's so kind," said Joanna Griffiths.



http://www.kxxv.com/story/32441282/man-who-walks-16-miles-to-2-jobs-gets-free-car

[grossproffit]

3. Thanks so much for adding Kyle Bigler's story. There are some good people in this world. Really good

[sheshe2]

4. First I want to give high praise too Fred and the officers that helped him.

Thanks grossproffit, beautiful. High praise for police when so much bad is happening within their ranks.

Kudos to them.

Is it okay to add another?

Detroit Man Who Walks 21 Miles To, From Work Receives New Car

The Detroit man who made national headlines for walking his 21-mile commute to and from work broke down after receiving a new car.

James Robertson, a factory worker from Detroit, has been walking over 10 miles to and from his job for the past 10 years since his last car broke down.

On Friday, a local Ford dealership invited Robertson to test drive cars and surprised him with a new red Ford Taurus.



Flood of Donations for Detroit Man With 21-Mile Walk to Work

More: http://abcnews.go.com/US/WorldNews/detroit-man-walks-21-miles-work-receives-car/story?id=28796172

This is what we should all strive to be. Loving, Caring, Giving.

Thanks for your thread. Awesome.

[grossproffit]

5. Awesome! Thank you so much for adding James Robertson's story.

[Chakab]

6. Great story.

[tavernier]

7. Beautiful.

Thank you for posting!

Good people far outweigh the bad, but they don't get any media attention.

[SheilaT]

8. My personal experience is not quite the same, but I'll share it anyway.

In 1967, I was living in downtown Tucson, AZ, working at the phone company. No car, because the walk to and from work was only about a mile, maybe less. I decided to enroll in a class at the University of Arizona that summer, and the only way to get there was to walk. And so I did. It was about two miles, not so onerous a distance, but I was heading out around 8am, when the temperatures were still reasonable. But I'd be walking home at noon, when it would be 100 degrees, maybe hotter. I was young, only 18, and knew I could deal with it.

The very first day of that class, to my intense relief another student was a former high school classmate, and she cheerfully drove me home every day. In an air conditioned car.

I will never forget or fail to appreciate that kindness.

[grossproffit]

11. What a nice memory. Thanks for sharing it.

[SheilaT]

14. I'm glad you appreciated it.

At my 50th high school reunion last month, I saw the wonderful classmate who'd helped me out so long ago and thanked her again. She barely remembered it, and took it for granted that she'd have helped me like this.

Things like this are why I try to help others when I can.

I used to work the information desk at my city's only hospital, and more than once encountered someone who needed taxi fare or a meal. For the taxi I'd give cash. For the meal, my employee ID paid. Since the info desk was directly across from the gift shop, which also sold sandwiches, salads, and snacks, I'd tell the person to go inside, select what was needed and then wave to me so I could go inside and pay. I got something like a 20% discount on purchases, and I could afford to do this.

I've been a lot poorer than I am now, although never homeless and never (so far as I know) very close to homelessness.

Here's another part of the picture: When I was fourteen years old my mother packed the five of us kids still at home (oldest brother was in the army by now) ranging in age from 15 to 8, and moved us from northern New York State to Tucson, AZ to escape an alcoholic, abusive father/husband. Because she was a nurse she knew she could find work anywhere, but those early years were desperate. She worked as many extra shifts as possible. Sometimes I didn't see her for two weeks running. When I got a weekend babysitting job that paid all of three dollars (this was 1963, not as terrible as it sounds) I'd usually ask the mom of the girls I was babysitting, who was driving me home, to stop at a grocery store so I could buy groceries for us. She was astonished, and I thought it was normal.

I was also, as odd as this might sound, always aware that I was white, and that as tough as things were I didn't have the added layer of being black.

I know from experience how easy it is, once a person is no longer in poverty, to forget how all-encompassing poverty is. To forget how it limits your vision, your sense of what is possible. And if everyone around you is likewise in poverty, then there's almost no chance you'll escape that world.

Even today, I often have a world view based on my childhood relative poverty. In reality, I'm quite well off, although not in the 1%. I do volunteer to feed the homeless. I do try to help out in other ways. I'm by no means a paragon of virtue, just one small human trying to help out.

[Loki]

9. More love, less hate.

[turbinetree]

10. And where is the republican controlled legislature and the republican governor on this issue

here's a oldie but goodie on where they are in Georgia

Honk-----------------for a political revolution

[sheshe2]

12. KnR

[Feeling the Bern]

13. I guess this makes up for all the extrajudicial killings they have gotten away with

See, they aren't all bad. See? Hell, one cop brought someone two gallons of milk.

Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Oscar Grant. . .but this excuses all police racism, bigotry and misconduct.

[NightWatcher]

16. Do you shit on little kids' birthday cakes too?

It's just a good news story. No one said it makes up for murder. There are some good cops out there.

Chill out

[Feeling the Bern]

17. I will not chill out. Exceptions to the rule are not the rule and

it's bad enough we canonize police and make excuses for their extrajudicial killings. Now, we will get flogged by badge sycophants with this one story, which police and their apologists will use ad nauseum to disprove racism and bigotry and murder in their ranks.

[NightWatcher]

18. Yawn.

Someone posted a positive story and you think they are worshipping murderous cops.

I bet you're 23. Am I close?

[Feeling the Bern]

21. 41, nice try.

[mythology]

22. You think the majority of cops kill black people?

This is why it's so difficult to have a real conversation about police violence, racism, poverty and so on. Too many people reduce the other side to some evil Snidely Whiplash cartoon villain. You can't admit that there are some good cops without sad name calling like "badge sycophants" and calling other people "apologists".

Is it really so hard to admit that the causes of police shootings might not be because the cop got up in the morning and decided to kill a black guy? That maybe the situation is complex and cultural and that just maybe you would be prone to the same sort of biases and mistakes under pressure? It's easy to sit on the internet and pretend that you wouldn't do the same thing. Study after study shows people are more biased than they understand. But when you have a gun, that stray thought that you aren't even aware of, can be lethal. But the way to solve that problem isn't through calling all cops bad, it's realizing that our society has a bias that black people (particularly men) are perceived as threatening and that we have to solve that to solve the issues of police violence. That we have to solve issues of economic disparity, education disparity etc.

Police violence doesn't occur in a vacuum. It's occurs because police are drawn from the larger society. Their biases aren't something they just get in the police academy. It starts long before then.

[pablo_marmol]

25. Spot on, mythology.

This is why it's so difficult to have a real conversation about police violence, racism, poverty and so on.

[EX500rider]

36. "Exceptions to the rule...." With about 1 million arrests a month the murders..

.....are the exception to the rule.

[Dreamer Tatum]

19. Hey everyone, check out the hardcore dude here!

There you go. You're welcome.

[Feeling the Bern]

20. Is cyber bullying all you got to respond with?

[classykaren]

24. It's a good PR story from the cop shop but I tend to agree with feeling the Bern

[romanic]

26. Lighten up Francis.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

27. Your post is useless ...

... without pictures.

[romanic]

28. I know I was just too lazy to post it.

[PersonNumber503602]

32. Would have you rather this story not been reported or posted on here?

What's your opinion of the police officers in this story?

This is a good story about both a kid who was working hard and doing whatever it took to improve himself, and of police stepping up and behaving in ways that we all think police should behave.

[NaturalHigh]

35. I knew someone would be along to make a really shitty comment.

Congratulations. Yours was the first!

[840high]

15. Wonderful story. That young

man is an inspiration. Good that everyone helped.

[Baitball Blogger]

23. Thank God they took time to find out.

"After meeting Fred, I could tell he was a good kid,” Gordon State College Police Officer Dicky Carreker told the Barnesville Herald-Gazette. “He was a young kid who had been dealt a bad hand and was trying to make the best out of it. All he wanted was a job."

[raven mad]

29. There are good police officers, there are decent cops.

But many are in it for the power, and THEY are pigs.

[mike_c]

30. this is cool, but one of my former students bicycled from his home in Chicago...

...to university on the west coast of northern California and back each year in basically the same circumstances-- too poor to afford other transportation options. He didn't think it was anything particularly remarkable either. I don't know how long the trip took, but weeks obviously. After graduation he decided to travel in South America-- he grew up speaking both English and Spanish-- so he simply hopped on his bike and rode all the way to Patagonia and most of the way back. His photos of that trip are amazing. At one point he and a friend decided to take a "short cut" for several hundred miles riding on railroad tracks, so they built an iron framework to connect their bikes together, one on each rail. When trains came they had to get it off the tracks in a hurry! He is in grad school today, working on his PhD.

[PersonNumber503602]

33. I wish I had that sort of drive and motivation.

[alphafemale]

37. Wow. That is amazing.

He must have had to repair the bike quire often as well.

[Soxfan58]

31. To bad

this story couldn't have led the evening news.

[NaturalHigh]

34. Some good news for a change!