A viral photo shows that being a police officer is more than just doling out tickets and locking up transgressors. More often than we may realize (indeed on a daily basis), cops have to deal with very real, often very harsh life situations where their own humanity comes fully into play.
Michelle Burton, of the Birmingham Police Department, was nearing the end of her shift one day back in August 2016 when she and a few other officers got a call about a couple who had overdosed.
When they arrived at the apartment, a 30-year-old man was found deceased, while a 35-year-old woman lay unresponsive on the couch with just a faint pulse. The couple’s four children, aged between 1 month old to 7 years old, were badly shaken and needed tending to.
The woman was given a dose of Narcan, an opioid antidote, before being rushed to the hospital. The children were brought to the police station.
The officers had to look after the children, who had been placed in a high-stress circumstance.
After telling her husband, a sheriff’s sergeant, that she would be coming home late, she removed her vest and police gear so that she could cuddle and bottle-feed the 1-month-old.
“A lot of us are parents,” Lt. Sean Edwards, Birmingham police spokesman, told The Post. “We just go into parent mode and not necessarily police mode. … Officer Burton, she just really wanted to grab the baby and just cuddle the baby.”
The photo soon went viral, garnering numerous positive responses.
“I’m overwhelmed about the whole thing,” Burton said. “I don’t want people to think that it’s only me that does this. We all do things like this. … It was one of those nights where everybody worked together and everybody did what they needed to do.”
At the same time, though, Burton has gotten some criticism from the children’s family.
