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Great Falls police officer’s kindness inspired a woman to “pay it forward”

Posted at 5:00 PM, Apr 23, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-23 19:00:54-04

A Great Falls police officer’s generosity inspired one community member to pay it forward.

When Betie Knight went to work on Saturday (April 21) at O’Reilly Auto Parts, she didn’t expect to see Senior Police Officer Shane Daniels come through the doors.

He had just pulled over a woman for a taillight that was out. Instead of writing her a ticket, though, he offered to help the woman.

“I went and rang out Officer Daniels and everyone is just kind of staring at him because I basically left everything I was doing to go help him,” said Knight. “He kind of looks around and goes, ‘Oh yeah, you know I pulled over this gal and now I’m going to help her fix her taillight because it’s out and she doesn’t have anyone else to help her.’”

That’s when his good intentions inspired Knight to pay it forward.

“You get that feeling sometimes when you want to do something and it just hit me and I was like, you know, I’m going to go ahead and pay for these bulbs myself because he’s already out there doing this amazing thing. You know, instead of writing a ticket for some gal, he’s fixing her taillight.”

Knight posted the story to the Great Falls Police Department’s Facebook page. She hoped sharing it would not only give him recognition, but also inspire more kindness.

“If you read the Facebook page, he has all these people that are saying all these amazing things that he does,” said Knight. “He’s out there doing the things that deserve the praise, that deserve the recognition, and especially in society today when there’s so negativity towards our law enforcement officers who are literally out there every day risking their lives for us.”

The Great Falls Police Department responded with a post of their own saying in part, “…Daniels does not particularly like having his photo taken or getting public praise (he does this kind of stuff frequently) but, he asked us to tell this story because he was so moved by the generosity of Betie and the team at O’Reilly.”

That post has been shared more than 1,000 times.

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