You just can't help some people.

poppy · #1 12/03/12, 08:30 PM

Sadly, this is the state of our country. No matter how much you give them, people always think they deserve more.

Remember the cop who gave a homeless man new boots?

Here is a refresher:

A photo of a New York City police officer giving new boots to a barefoot homeless man in Times Square has created an online sensation.

The NYPD posted the photo of Officer Lawrence DePrimo kneeling to help the man put on the boots to the department's Facebook page. By Thursday evening, the photo had been shared more than 140,000 times, "liked" more than 420,000 times and received 31,000 comments.

Jennifer Foster of Florence, Ariz., says she was visiting Times Square with her boyfriend on Nov. 14 when they saw a shoeless man asking for change. As she approached the man, she said a police officer came onto the scene. Foster, a civilian dispatch manager with the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, took a photo and forwarded it and a note to the NYPD.

She wrote:

"Right when I was about to approach, one of your officers came up behind him. The officer said, 'I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you.' The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man. The officer expected NOTHING in return and did not know I was watching. I have been in law enforcement for 17 years. I was never so impressed in my life. I did not get the officer's name. It is important, I think, for all of us to remember the real reason we are in this line of work. The reminder this officer gave to our profession in his presentation of human kindness has not been lost on myself or any of the Arizona law enforcement officials with whom this story has been shared."

Officer DePrimo, 25, who joined the department in 2010, was shocked at the attention, The New York Times reports.

"It was freezing out and you could see the blisters on the man's feet," DePrimo said in an interview. "I had two pairs of socks and I was still cold." They started talking; he found out the man's shoe size: 12, the Times reports.

DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store at about 9:30 p.m.

"We were just kind of shocked," said Jose Cano, 28, a store manager who used his employee discount to cut the price of the $100 boots. "Most of us are New Yorkers and we just kind of pass by that kind of thing. Especially in this neighborhood."

DePrimo told the Times that he keeps the receipt for the $75 boots in his vest to remind him ''that sometimes people have it worse.''

DePrimo credited his grandfather for the good deed.

"The true inspiration was my grandfather, and he told me when I was much younger, 'If you are going to do something, do it 100 percent. And do it, or don't do it at all,'" DePrimo told CBS News. "And I think that stuck with me my entire life."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...ation/1734495/

So how does the homeless man feel about the gift?

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City homeless man — whose gift of boots from an NYPD police officer became an online sensation — is back on the streets with no shoes.

The New York Times (Homeless Man Says He?s Grateful for Boots but He?s Barefoot Again - NYTimes.com ) found him Sunday night wandering barefoot in Manhattan. The paper identified him as Jeffrey Hillman, formerly of South Plainfield, N.J.

Asked about the $100 all-weather boots Officer Larry DePrimo gave him on Nov. 14, Hillman says he's hidden them because "they are worth a lot of money."

He says he's grateful for the gift, but he wants "a piece of the pie" because the photo was posted online "without permission."

An Arizona tourist snapped the photo of the officer presenting new boots to Hillman. It went viral after it was posted on the NYPD's Facebook page.

http://news.yahoo.com/homeless-man-s...A2.433%3A0.0~~

vicker · #2 12/03/12, 08:38 PM

You sure got that right. Mental illness is very hard to treat. Especially among the poor and destitute.

AR Cattails · #3 12/03/12, 08:46 PM

I heard about this on the KLove radio station. All except for the last part of your article. The part where he says he wants his part of the pie because the picture was used without his permission. This wasn't mentioned.

What I heard was he said he hid them in a place no one knew about because the gesture of the officer meant so much to him. He says he's afraid he might get robbed or killed if someone tried to take them off his feet.

The announcer at the station was saying isn't that wonderful. Doesn't that make you want to do all you can to help the homeless. And all I could think of was no, not if you spend the money that the cop spent to help this homeless man and all he does is hides them back never to wear them. The cop is out $75 and the man is still shoeless. Doesn't make any sense to me.

poppy · #4 12/03/12, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vicker

You sure got that right. Mental illness is very hard to treat. Especially among the poor and destitute.

Maybe. Maybe not. It all could be his way of playing on people's sympathy to get money. I used to know an old hermit who never wore shoes. He even ran a trap line near his cabin in the winter barefooted. He was as sane as anyone else.

poppy · #5 12/03/12, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AR Cattails

I heard about this on the KLove radio station. All except for the last part of your article. The part where he says he wants his part of the pie because the picture was used without his permission. This wasn't mentioned.

What I heard was he said he hid them in a place no one knew about because the gesture of the officer meant so much to him. He says he's afraid he might get robbed or killed if someone tried to take them off his feet.

The announcer at the station was saying isn't that wonderful. Doesn't that make you want to do all you can to help the homeless. And all I could think of was no, not if you spend the money that the cop spent to help this homeless man and all he does is hides them back never to wear them. The cop is out $75 and the man is still shoeless. Doesn't make any sense to me.

Hard to tell. Some of those guys are pretty slick. He may be telling the truth or he may have them back at his $300,000 house or he may have sold them for booze or drug money.

Oggie · #6 12/03/12, 09:07 PM

Well, I guess that he's going to have a little bit of trouble pulling himself up by his bootstraps.

where I want to · #7 12/03/12, 09:08 PM

Anyone who has dealt with "homeless" of this nature finds out that they are there for a reason. Some mental illnesses but a lot of drugs and alcohol. It is not that help is unavailable but that the restrainst on behavior are not acceptable.
In my more inexperienced days, I had dealings with a homeless guy who was one of those "charming" drunks. Always cheerful and pleasant but never sober.
One day I ran into him (nearly literally because he was lying totally drunk in a parking space between two cars in a parking lot,) and got him to move to a safer spot.
Deciding he was going to get killed, I contacted social services to see if they could do something. They could not get him to go to a doctor for a competency evaluation so they asked me to provide a written statement about what I knew about him. With that they made a determination and put him under public guardianship. That is when I found out he was a pleasant drunk but the meanest, nastiest, most foul mouthed man sober I have ever known. He was bad tempered and threatening.
He got a free public attorney to represent him. That attorney got the guardianship removed and the man happy when back to being a charming drunk. Who died of exposure laying drunk in a parking lot two weeks afterwards.

A lot of people think that society turns a blind eye to human misery, But in truth, a whole lot of people refuse to do the basic things that make it possible to do something to help them. In truth they choose the life they live even though they probably blame everyone else for the consequences.
I

Johnny Dolittle · #8 12/03/12, 10:11 PM

One time back in 1985 I was driving my pickup through a local town and an older man was hitch hiking so I gave him a ride. I had been camping and there was a sleeping bag back in the truck bed. I do not know if he saw the bag but I was visiting with him and through the conversation I learned he was sleeping in a car. The weather was turning colder so I felt bad for the guy and gave him my sleeping bag before he got out of the truck. A few hours later I was coming back through the same town and there was the same man hitch hiking again. Now he didn't have a sleeping bag.... but he did have a brown bag with a bottle in it ! The sleeping bag would keep him warm many nights but that bottle only until its contents were emptied. I decided that maybe when he got in the truck he noticed the sleeping bag in the back and so made up a story about sleeping in a car to scam me. Who knows? And how can you help someone like this.

.... Then there are children in town who do not get adequate food or clothing. I could give their parents some money but they would only use it to buy lottery tickets.... which is why their children are so needy. And again.... how can you help people like this. Give them food or food stamps and they will sell the food for lottery money

Sad world it is

Harry Chickpea · #9 12/03/12, 10:56 PM

Actually... the homeless guy is probably right. Use of his image - under current intellectual property laws - may have been fair use within an original news article, but if he was not paid by the photographer and did not sign a release to have his picture taken, and it has become celebrity, he could be due compensation from media that picked up on the original story and made it so. As a pro photographer, I only did images of people under conditions where it was obvious that they were intentionally posing, or in a studio where they had signed releases. (And that was a number of years ago, before the laws became more picky.)

He is right about the boots as well. He is safer on the streets NOT wearing them.

What folks here are missing is situational incongruity. Imagine if everyone on this forum was a polo player. A new forum member comes in and talks about his old workhorse not pulling a plow as well as it used to, so one generous forum member gives the new member a polo saddle for the horse. Is the intention good? Probably so. Has that member considered the long term effect of the act of generosity? Probably not.

People are set in their ways. The Pope admitted to the December 25th celebration being an error. Is that stopping people from celebrating? Women have been warned about the problems with high heeled shoes. Does that keep them from wearing them? How many men here wear chaps, gloves, ear and eye protection, steel toed boots, and a helmet when using a chain saw? When we judge a man for not wearing a gift that could get him killed, we judge not him, but ourselves. When we meekly acquiesce to not making a copy of an old Fritz Lang film because someone stuck a copyright notice on the front, and we might deny someone their chance to make an unjust dollar, how do we deny a man the right to make money off his own image?

A fellow who lived a couple thousand years ago talked about such things. Maybe not in those terms, but he had some pretty good teachings that some people may have forgotten.

Oggie · #10 12/03/12, 11:03 PM

On a public street, in plain view, anyone is fair game to have a photo made and published as long as it's a "this is what I saw" sort of photo.

Use such a photo to represent a product, and you'll get into trouble. But merely using it to report what was seen is fair use in almost any situation.

Harry Chickpea · #11 12/03/12, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oggie

On a public street, in plain view, anyone is fair game to have a photo made and published as long as it's a "this is what I saw" sort of photo.

Use such a photo to represent a product, and you'll get into trouble. But merely using it to report what was seen is fair use in almost any situation.

That right to photograph is being eroded more and more. Case in point:

A Photographer Is "Banned" for Taking Pictures on Church Street | Seven Days

Take a look at tonight's WPIX homepage - see the greyed out circle?
WPIX-TV | New York News, Entertainment, Sports, Weather & Traffic - WPIX
Recognition of privacy rights and rights NOT to be publicly paraded are well known to the media. The ones that are protected the most are the ones with the high paid lawyers defending those rights, and those whose actions may bring them into the fold of a high priced law office.

texican · #12 12/03/12, 11:24 PM

Hid them? Like back home in his penthouse apt?
Sold for Ripple or crack, more'n likely.

Oggie · #13 12/03/12, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harry Chickpea

That right to photograph is being eroded more and more. Case in point:

A Photographer Is "Banned" for Taking Pictures on Church Street | Seven Days

Take a look at tonight's WPIX homepage - see the greyed out circle?
WPIX-TV | New York News, Entertainment, Sports, Weather & Traffic - WPIX
Recognition of privacy rights and rights NOT to be publicly paraded are well known to the media. The ones that are protected the most are the ones with the high paid lawyers defending those rights, and those whose actions may bring them into the fold of a high priced law office.

The law and how they are enforced are two different things.

Legally, folks are free to photograph what or who is in plain view on a public street.

Some folks might try to abuse the law, but the law stands nonetheless.

Harry Chickpea · #14 12/03/12, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by texican

Hid them? Like back home in his penthouse apt?
Sold for Ripple or crack, more'n likely.

So... Is there something suddenly wrong with laissez-faire capitalism now? Or are you suggesting that the nanny-state policeman had the right to choose what was done with a freely given gift after it was given?

He might have sold the shoes for crack or Ripple (is that even sold anymore?) If so, and it didn't affect anyone but himself, so what? In a free country, he can do that. Rich folks can buy a sports car for a reckless driver offspring and no one bats an eyelash. People who can't pay their mortgage can buy lottery tickets. If anything, a street person buying Ripple with shoes has a better chance of success in his goal than most lottery players.

The policeman had something that was honored by the public. That something (in case you forgot) was compassion. Real compassion comes without strings attached. The fact that his expression of compassion didn't work as expected is no reflection upon anything meaningful. Using the compassion of another, and a misunderstanding of street values, to play a public game of "You ungrateful so-and-so" on someone with problems is pretty twisted.

Harry Chickpea · #15 12/04/12, 12:25 AM

Photographers have to deal with intervention by LEOs and Rent-a-cops who attempt to bluster and can find other ways of arresting.

Terrorism | Homeland Security News Wire

The upshot of a lot of this is that you can take photos in a public place for your own use, but once money gets involved, or people are recognizable, the rules can change quickly. "Expectation of privacy" is not a precise term. You might expect privacy in a toilet, but not in a large restroom. A bum on a public street covered with a box or blanket can argue an "expectation of privacy" from groups of wandering photographers if he was in the process of wiping his ... nose while under those covers.

Look at intent. Did the bum intend to be photographed and made into a national symbol? I doubt it. Do national symbols have monetary value to the media and to advertisers? They sure do. Are people entitled to compensation when their image is used for profit? Yes.

As I said at the outset, the original story was quite likely fair use. You can bet your shoes that the image is covered by copyright - either by the individual as a native copyright, or it was PURCHASED and copyrighted by the first media organization that ran the story. Subsequent reprints (for which that media organization was PAID) are no longer "news" but "product."

I have to side with the street person on just about all of this. Even Publisher's Clearing House gets a signed photo release.

trulytricia · #16 12/04/12, 07:47 AM

Sounds like this guy should have been given an old worn looking pair of shoes. But then he could have got them himself at any charitable thrift stores just by asking, and he knows this.

So he lives in a different way it seems.

joseph97297 · #17 12/04/12, 10:54 AM

Yep, he must have sold them to buy ripple.....

or he could have sold them and bought shoes for other homeless people that weren't as tough or able to stand being shoeless.....

guess it is whether you are a glass half full or half empty person.....

(me, I am not a glass half full or half empty person, I just want to know who is drinking from my glass).

plowjockey · #18 12/04/12, 03:15 PM

I always thought you helped people, because you thought they needed help, not because you were expecting, that they would be grateful for your assistance.

Homeless people almost always have more problems, than just being without a home.

At least he was coherent enough to hide the expensive, new, boots, verses actually trying to wear them. He'd have been smashed over the head and those boots stolen, right off his feet, the first night.

Happy Holidays.

TheMartianChick · #19 12/04/12, 07:23 PM

I read earlier today that the man is not homeless... He lives in a subsidized apartment and gets by with his Veteran's benefits and Social Security (I think). I'll see if I can find the article again.

The man clearly has some mental health issues and does not wear shoes for some reason or another. A woman also stated that she had given him a pair of shoes before and that he still went around barefoot. Not wearing shoes is a symptom of the other issues in his life. Many of our nations veterans are homeless due to mental health issues.

I still applaud the officer that bought him the boots. He saw a need and sought to fill it. New footgear can't fix mental health issues, but I think that a lot of people thought that a simple gesture of kindness would turn this man's life around. Unfortunately, life isn't so simple.

Edited to add the link to the article that I read.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/12/...ess-after-all/

Callieslamb · #20 12/04/12, 07:59 PM

My sister is mentally. About the time her apartment gets all situated so she can be comfortable ( chair, table, plate, bowl- nothing fancy) she starts giving it all away. she says possessions cause her so much stress that she can't handle it. Then, when they are all gone, she says she doesn't have anything and needs a chair to sit in...

It can be very hard.