By Sarah Goodyear
CityLab
The idea originated with a cop in the Seattle Police Department who was about to retire. Years earlier, his wife had been hit by a driver who failed to stop for her at a crosswalk. He and his colleagues regularly conducted enforcement efforts to ticket other drivers who did the same.
But as he was about to leave his post, in 2012, Captain Richard Belshay decided to do something a little different: instead of stopping drivers who violated the law, he bought a stack of $10 gift cards from a local restaurant and handed them out to drivers (and bicyclists) who did the right thing and stopped to let people on foot cross the street.
In an hour, 34 people were rewarded for stopping when they were supposed to, earning a friendly word of encouragement and a gift card. “Our police department has suffered a lot of negative media attention of late,” Belshay told Q13 Fox TV in Seattle. “So if my small gesture of gratitude to the public happens to generate some positive news for our police department, then my recognizing 34 strangers for doing the right thing was worth it.”
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