With all the negative attention focused on police officers these days, it’s good to see people just appreciating cops for doing their jobs every day—regardless of skin color.

Police are being disrespected at Whataburger and Starbucks — though one pizzeria is offering them free food — but it’s rare that a man offers a selfie and a smile after being pulled over for speeding.  Especially if the man is black and the officer is white.

But that’s exactly what Greg Barnes, Jr. did, and he posted the picture on his Facebook account last week.  Now it’s been shared over 461,000 times.

Barnes wrote, “I was pulled over today for speeding. The officer did not know me nor did I know him, but we each showed one another a mutual display of respect in our interaction. He was doing his job, and I had made a mistake in trying to hurry home to get started moving that lead to our path’s crossing.”

After discussing how negative society has become in dealing with police interactions, Barnes added, “In the end we both thanked each other for our mutual displays of respect and agreed to take a ‘selfie’ together to help tell our story.”

He summed up:

I can’t stress enough that NO demographic and/or profession of people are all bad. Neither of us are the enemy. We can continue to fight against each other until we are literally “black and blue”, or we can show one another the respect we inherently deserve, not as “black man” and “blue police officer”, but as humans. None greater, none less…#‎Respect

On Sunday, after realizing his selfie went viral, Barnes posted a followup.  “Together, we, the only race that matters, the human race, can all make this world a better place than we found it.”

Based on the response, that’s a message we all need to hear.

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Steve Berman

Steve is a serial entrepreneur who has been starting and running businesses for 25 years. Writing about conservative causes is his passion.

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