A pair of New York police officers is earning praise after they were called to shut down a neighbourhood lemonade stand and bought drinks instead.
Whitney Glover said her two children and a few other kids in her neighbourhood of Newburgh, located 107 kilometres north of New York City, decided to set up a roadside lemonade stand during rush hour on Monday evening.
“We were probably out there for an hour and a half when I noticed the cop car pull up,” Glover told local station News 12 Westchester on Wednesday.
It seemed someone in the neighbourhood had called the police about the children’s lemonade stand.
However, when Officers Clayton Dubois and Thomas O’Connell of the Town of Newburgh Police Department approached the group, Glover said they received an unexpected greeting from them.
“His first words were, ‘Can you believe someone called the cops on kids selling lemonade?’” she recalled.
The two police officers then proceeded to buy some lemonade and pose for a photo with the children, which Glover posted on Facebook.
“Some bitter person decided to call the cops on them. Instead of the officers shutting it down they decided to have a cup themselves. Thanks Town of Newburgh Police Department,” she wrote in an accompanying caption.
The police officers said the children weren’t doing anything wrong even if their roadside stand created some traffic.
Since Glover posted the photo of the police with the children on Facebook, she said dozens of customers have stopped by for lemonade and the children have made hundreds of dollars in only three days.
“I wasn’t expecting it [the Facebook post] to become the way it did,” she said. “It was more of an appreciation and a thank you to the police.”
