On a cold November night in Times Square, Officer Lawrence DePrimo was working a counterterrorism post when he encountered an older, barefooted homeless man. The officer disappeared for a moment, then returned with a new pair of boots, and knelt to help the man put them on.
The act of kindness would have gone unnoticed and mostly forgotten, had it not been for a tourist from Arizona.

Her snapshot — taken with her cellphone on Nov. 14 and posted to the New York Police Department’s official Facebook page late Tuesday — has made Officer DePrimo an overnight Internet hero.

By Wednesday evening, the post had been viewed 1.6 million times, and had attracted nearly 275,000 “likes” and more than 16,000 comments — a runaway hit for a Police Department that waded warily onto the social media platform this summer with mostly canned photos of gun seizures, award ceremonies and the police commissioner.

Among all of those posts, the blurry image of Officer DePrimo kneeling to help the shoeless man as he sat on 42nd Street stood out. “This is definitely the most viral,” said Barbara Chen, a spokeswoman for the department who helps manage its Facebook page.

Thousands of people commented on Facebook and Reddit, which linked to the post on Wednesday. Most of them praised Officer DePrimo, yet some suspected that the photograph had been staged. Many debated whether the officer’s actions were representative of police officers in general, or were just unusually exceptional.

“I still have a grudge against law enforcement everywhere,” wrote one commenter on the police Facebook page. “But my respects to that fine officer.”

Officer DePrimo, 25, who joined the department in 2010 and lives with his parents on Long Island, was shocked at the attention. He was not warned before the photo went online; the department had not learned which officer was in the picture until hours later.

The officer, normally assigned to the Sixth Precinct in the West Village, readily recalled the encounter. “It was freezing out and you could see the blisters on the man’s feet,” he said in an interview. “I had two pairs of socks and I was still cold.” They started talking; he found out the man’s shoe size: 12.

As the man walked slowly down Seventh Avenue on his heels, Officer DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store at about 9:30 p.m. “We were just kind of shocked,” said Jose Cano, 28, a manager working at the store that night. “Most of us are New Yorkers and we just kind of pass by that kind of thing. Especially in this neighborhood.”

Mr. Cano volunteered to give the officer his employee discount to bring down the regular $100 price of the all-weather boots to a little more than $75. The officer has kept the receipt in his vest since then, he said, “to remind me that sometimes people have it worse.”

The photo was taken by Jennifer Foster, a civilian communications director for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona. She said the moment resonated for personal reasons: She remembered as a young girl seeing her father, a 32-year veteran of the Phoenix police force, buy food for a homeless man.

“He squatted down, just like this officer,” she said.

After returning from vacation, she described the picture in an e-mail to the New York Police Department, thinking of it as a sort of a compliment card. She never expected the picture to end up online — “I’m not on Facebook,” she said — but a department official e-mailed her and asked if she would send along the photo so it could be posted.

As for the man he helped, Officer DePrimo never got his name, and he could not be immediately located on Wednesday. “He was the most polite gentleman I had met,” the officer said, adding that the man’s face lit up at the sight of the boots. Officer DePrimo offered him a cup of coffee, but “as soon as the boots were on him, he went on his way, and I just went back to my post.”

 InquisitorVaron wrote:
Cynical time, are you sure the guy was homeless and not just trying to make a buck? It happens you know

 juraigamer wrote:
New shoe stew is the best you can get in down town new york.

 d-usa wrote:
The beggar could have been a person in genuine need, or he could have been a deceitful and dishonest mastermind that preys on the gullible.

Neither of those two things have any affect on what should be the focus on the story:

Somebody did a good thing that they didn't have to do.

 d-usa wrote:
The beggar could have been a person in genuine need, or he could have been a deceitful and dishonest mastermind that preys on the gullible.

Neither of those two things have any affect on what should be the focus on the story:

Somebody did a good thing that they didn't have to do.

 d-usa wrote:
The beggar could have been a person in genuine need, or he could have been a deceitful and dishonest mastermind that preys on the gullible.

Neither of those two things have any affect on what should be the focus on the story:

Somebody did a good thing that they didn't have to do.

 Albatross wrote:
Uh, I feel I should dispel the myth that I'm an aristocratic Englishman who goes around America paying homeless people to let me photograph them. It was his idea.

 d-usa wrote:
The beggar could have been a person in genuine need, or he could have been a deceitful and dishonest mastermind that preys on the gullible.

Neither of those two things have any affect on what should be the focus on the story:

Somebody did a good thing that they didn't have to do.

 Testify wrote:
The more publicity we give charity, the more unlikely it is to be repeated.

"But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret."

NEW YORK -- The New York City homeless man – whose gift of boots from an NYPD police officer became an online sensation – is back on the streets with no shoes.

The New York Times ( http://nyti.ms/UjCGbY ) found him Sunday night wandering barefoot in Manhattan. The paper identified him as Jeffrey Hillman, formerly of South Plainfield, N.J.

Asked about the $100 all-weather boots Officer Larry DePrimo gave him on Nov. 14, Hillman says he's hidden them because "they are worth a lot of money."

He says he's grateful for the gift, but he wants "a piece of the pie" because the photo was posted online "without permission."

Mattman154 wrote:

Beat me to it! Probably hawked em for booze

Lazyboy wrote:There are homeless people everywhere.
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on.
Why am I judging this poor bastard.

But if you dig beyond the cursory Huff Po piece, there is more to it. The New York Times, who originally posted the follow-up, discovered some background on Mr. Hillman that gives deeper insight to his concerns:

“Those shoes are hidden. They are worth a lot of money,” Mr. Hillman said in an interview on Broadway in the 70s. “I could lose my life.”

Mr. Hillman, 54, was by turns aggrieved, grateful and taken aback by all the attention that had come his way — even as he struggled to figure out what to do about it.

“I was put on YouTube, I was put on everything without permission. What do I get?” he said. “This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie.” [Emphasis added]

He did not recall the photo being taken but remembered well the gift from Officer DePrimo. “I appreciate what the officer did, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I wish there were more people like him in the world.”

At another point he said: “I want to thank everyone that got onto this thing. I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. It meant a lot to me. And to the officer, first and foremost.” [Emphasis added.]

The Times writers were able to get Hillman talking about his life and background. Turns out he’s a vet; joined the Army in 1978 (with ID to prove it); served in Germany and the U.S. as a “food service specialist”; was honorably discharged and worked at subsequent kitchen jobs for a while.

He has two children — Nikita, 22, and Jeffrey, 24 — but has had little contact with them since a visit three years ago, Mr. Hillman said.

He was reluctant to talk about how he ended up on the streets, staring blankly ahead when asked how his life went off course.

After a long pause, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know.”

That very human snapshot allows for an attitude shift from the audience. When you look at the bigger picture, it’s not hard to extrapolate how a man who served our country, had a family and, for reasons he can’t remember, is now barefoot and on the street, would want at least some of the bigger benefit he (understandably) believes is being wrought from a meme gone viral. With whatever dignity he has left, there is clearly still a part of him that considers his permission should have been sought before his image, his needy status, and his shoeless plight were blasted all over the world.

Can’t say I disagree.

In fact, I think it speaks highly of Mr. Hillman that he can, on one hand, honor the man who helped him (“I appreciate what the officer did…I wish there were more people like him in the world.”); on the other, still hold his own “personhood” in high enough esteem to assert that he should have been consulted, even compensated, for a viral story in which he played such a crucial role.

I hope someone does give him a suit and a job. His smarts just might surprise everybody.