Cop Buys Shoplifter Baby Formula Cans Instead Of Arresting him

A Kentucky police officer's act of kindness helped a single dad get out of a tough situation.

When he was called to arrest a man, he was moved by what he saw. The shoplifter was the father of a six-month-old baby, and he had been caught doing a strange thing---stealing Baby Formula cans from the Kroger grocery store in London, Kentucky, on January 17.

"As a police officer, it's not black and white for us," said Officer Justin Roby, according to wkyt.com. "There's a lot of gray. And you have to cipher through everything and you really need to figure out the whole story."

The store's loss prevention officer had caught the man trying to shoplift, and immediately called Officer Justin Roby, according to insider.foxnews.com.

"Me citing him for court wouldn't have done any good for him," Roby said to WKYT. "He's already short on money, can't afford formula, so me making him appear in court, he's still not going to have any food for that baby."

When his situation became clearer, the store dropped its charges, but what the officer did was more surprising. Instead of arresting him, he bought the father several cans of baby formula!

"You see your son or your daughter in that little carrier," Roby told the station. "And you think what would you want somebody to do for your son or your daughter?"

Roby also gave the man a message, that many people and organizations, including the police department, are ready to help those in need.

Roby added that he had done nothing exceptional, as all his colleagues do selfless acts, such as changing tires and giving people rides to homeless shelters everyday. However, it is an invisible and unknown aspect of the policemen.

"I think when [a lot of people] look at us, they see just the uniform and just the car, just the tools that we have on our belt," Roby explained to WKYT. "But behind the uniform, I'm a human being and I'm a person out in this community just like any of them. I have a little boy. I'm a father just like that gentleman was. We're not these robots. There's a human behind the badge."