Monday, July 20, 2015

Homeless man knits to make money/ 'Disabled' cop finds compassion

Jul. 7 Homeless man knits to make money: I found this on Yahoo:

Like many knitters, Gregory Patrick taught himself to knit because he admired a sweater in an upscale shop and wanted to see if he could make it for less money. Little did he know that picking up the hobby would ultimately save his life.

In 2010, Patrick walked out of a restaurant job after a disagreement with the owners, assuming that he’d easily be able to find work elsewhere. As it turned out, finding a new job was harder than he thought, and it sent him on a downward spiral that left him penniless and homeless.

“I was living in the woods. I had no money, no nothing,” he recalls.
A friend who knew how adept Patrick was at knitting suggested maybe he could sell his work online. His family helped him get a computer and a phone line and he knitted a bear and put it on Etsy. Within half an hour, the little teddy bear was sold and Patrick made enough money to buy some much-needed groceries.

Tiger Lily In Usa: What an amazing turn your journey has taken, may it always be good for you from here on, bless you.

Irritator: Thanks for sharing your success story.  While I hated it at the time I'm glad that Grandma taught me how to knit, bake and sew. Knowing how to sew got me through a rough time. I now make flat rabbits for the Volunteer Fire Department to give to the injured or displaced at accidents and fires.


My opinion: That was very inspiring.  The bears are so cute.  I hope people are grateful for their jobs.  Work and save your money.

Mealshare: I wrote about this charity on my blog before because it was in the Metro.

1. Find a restaurant.
2. Order a mealshare menu item.
3. We'll provide a meal to someone in need.

I was reading "Entrepreneurs encourage diners to give back while gobbling down" in the Metro on Oct. 27, 2014.

"There is no added cost to the customer.  The restaurant contributes a small amount (about $1) for every Mealshare item ordered to the organization.



Jul. 14, 2015 Would you help a lost child?: I found this on Yahoo news.  Here is a video that was like Primetime's "What would you do?" experiment I saw back in like 2007.  This 2015 video is by Denniscee TV. 

On Primetime, they showed a black, white boys and girls.  Most strangers don't notice and see the kid at all.  There was a cop nearby if there is a pedophile comes along.  However, no pedophiles.  I remember a kid ride by on a scooter and notices the kid and tells his mom that the kid is by himself and they ask where his mom is.

There was a man in a hoodie.  Maybe he was Mexican?  He noticed her and wanted to help her find her mom. 

Now onto Denniscee TV, it was really disturbing towards 3 min mark because there was a pedophile.  There was a big jerk who yells at the girl and says he doesn't know her mom and kind of pushes her away when she asks again.  A guy on his cell phone pointed at his phone and doesn't help her.

She sits by the wall and people see her, but they walk away without asking what's wrong.

At first they showed some good guys like 2 guys who decide to call the police to help find her mom, another gives her $15 so she can take the bus or cab home.

There was the scary part at 3 min.  First the girl goes up to a 50 yr old guy with glasses.  Then a guy with his face blurred out, he's wearing a white t-shirt and brown shorts comes and says: "Oh you're looking for your mom?  I just saw her yelling for you, she's right there.  I'll take you there."

Glasses guy: You can't take her.
Pedophile: I know her, she lives in my building.
A thumbs up sign comes on: "Thumbs up for this guy!!"
Pedophile takes her arm and starts pulling her.
Dennis intervenes.
Dennis: Why are you grabbing her?
Pedophile: I wasn't grabbing her, I was taking her to her mom.
Dennis: I'm calling the cops.

They showed a subtitle: "5 min. later the cops came and ran his name in the database.

-warrant
-restraining order
-neighborhood pedophile"

They couldn't put his face on the video to protect his identity.

"There is no exercise better for the heart
than doing right and helping people."

Would You Help A Lost Child? Watch to see who would

by Zoomin.tv 5:05 mins
Powerful social experiment. How do people react to a lost little girl who's asking for help finding her mother? Some reactions are shocking to say the least.


Jul. 15 Brandy singing and ignored: Does anyone remember this singer?  She had a big song called "The Boy is Mine" duet with Monica.  She was on the sitcom Moesha.  I'm a fan of hers.  Here's a video of her singing on a subway in NYC and she's singing to the camera.

No one pays attention to her.  She turns to ask: "What did you guys all think?"  No one reacts.  However, a 50 yr old white guy standing by tells her that she's got talent, but she needs to engage with the audience.  That's a good tip.  lol.

She was also wearing sunglasses so no one may have recognized her.


Jul. 17 'Disabled' cop finds compassion: I was reading in the Edmonton Journal and I found this article "Vancouver officer worked undercover in a wheelchair."  It was about how there were people in wheelchairs being mugged so a cop went undercover as one to catch them.  Instead, he found all these people being nice to him like buying him food and giving him about $24 worth of spare change, talking to him. 

You can watch the 2min video of the officer talking about the operation and the video of the people talking to him in a wheelchair.  There have been lots of positive comments below the article.

It was so inspiring and makes me feel happy.  I kind of feel like crying to see how good people truly are.


VANCOUVER — Vancouver police staff sergeant Mark Horsley wanted to make at least one bust. Very much. It would have made his year, taking down one of the creeps responsible for assaulting and robbing disabled Vancouverites.

People in wheelchairs, getting smacked around, mugged. It’s hard to imagine any crime more despicable or cowardly.

There have been 28 violent offences on wheelchair-using folk in the city since January 2014, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Two-thirds of those crimes occurred in the drug-infested Downtown Eastside (DTES). One of the victims was sexually assaulted; six others required medical attention.

Working with other VPD members, peer support workers and rehabilitation specialists, Horsley hatched a cunning scheme. He borrowed a $16,000 electric-powered wheelchair, grew some facial hair and wheeled into the DTES, undercover.

The objective: pretend to be disabled and brain-injured from a motorcycle accident that never really happened. Play the “easy mark.” Bait criminals by flashing cash and valuables, such as cellphones and cameras. When they pounce, collar them. Make them pay.

“My boss tied a pork chop around my neck and threw me into a shark tank,” Horsley recalled Thursday at VPD headquarters.

The operation didn’t go quite as planned.

“We wanted a serious assault or a robbery,” he said. “That’s all we were after.” Instead, people approached with offers of sympathy and hope. Encouragement. Friendly cautions. They made unsolicited donations: food, other stuff, and $24 in spare change.
In five days of undercover work from his wheelchair, with loot hanging from a fanny pack for all to see and perhaps snatch, and after more than 300 “contacts” with people, Horsley made not a single arrest. People wanted to give him things, instead.

Passers-by insisted on dropping coins into his lap. “I did not panhandle,” he said. Two men bought him pizza. Others just stopped and chatted, passed the time, exchanged pleasantries. All anyone took was his photograph.

Once, a guy came along and crouched over Horsley. He reached in, as if making for the fanny pack. Horsley tensed. Here it was, at last: Heinous crime in progress, bust coming up. The man’s fingers touched the fanny pack. Then the prospective perp zippered it shut. He asked Horsley to please be more careful with his things, for goodness sake.

Several more times, Horsley was approached and told to take care. By known criminals, even. This demonstrated there really is “honour” among certain thieves, he said. Robbing the disabled is “below their ethical standards,” he concluded. “The community will not stand for this.”

It’s all very heartening. But Horsley admitted some disappointment. Lots of planning went into the undercover operation, which rolled out in May and lasted into June. Before deployment, police analysts studied the Downtown Eastside and determined five specific locations — “high value target areas” — where he ought to troll. Horsley surveilled the neighbourhood himself, and watched how local wheelchair-assisted folk conducted themselves.

He spent hours in the borrowed wheelchair, practising his moves inside VPD headquarters. He grew a beard. He altered his speech somewhat.

He did not assign to the scheme a sexy cover name, alas. “I’m not good with that sort of thing,” Horsley confessed. What should have been dubbed “Operation Rolling Thunder” or at least “Project Snatch Fanny Pack” was discussed inside VPD HQ as “the undercover wheelchair program.”

Let’s be honest: the moniker sucked and the sting flopped.

The VPD deny it, of course. “I wouldn’t describe it as a failed operation,” Insp. Howard Chow said Thursday. Word will spread, he noted, and henceforth, a thief might think twice the next time he sees a vulnerable-looking person in a wheelchair. Because that person might be a cop.

“I wish we would have collared one of those predators,” Chow went on, but an arrest was always considered a long shot. At least there’s this: “At the end of it, we were $24 ahead of when we started.”

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