Police Offcer Pulls Shopping Cart For A Homeless For 12 Miles

A city police officer is being simultaneously celebrated and after he went out of his way to save a homeless woman's shopping cart full of possessions.

After arresting Marie Brooks on an outstanding warrant early one morning last week, Officer Nicholas Evans pulled her shopping cart alongside his police cruiser for 12 miles to the county jail so Brooks wouldn't lose her meager belongings. The trip took him an hour.

"He wasn't obligated to have a generous, spiritual heart," said Mary DeLazzer, who manages Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen in Bradenton.

But police are looking into whether Evans acted inappropriately and should be reprimanded. The act has made Evans the butt of jokes among peers who have heard the story, now posted on a popular police Web site.

Evans is a three-year veteran officer who works the overnight shift. He told his bosses he was unsuccessful at trying to find someone to take the cart after arresting Brooks for violating a court order stemming from a misdemeanor drug arrest, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

A call to Evans at the police department Tuesday was not immediately returned.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press

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