Police Officer Pulls Over Toddler — And Makes His Day
Officer Bill Mayo pulled over Jaxon Arbuckle, 2, at his mother’s request. (Photo: Ashley Crawford/Facebook)
For most parents, watching their child get pulled over is a nightmare. But when Ashley Crawford saw the flashing lights of a police car behind her son’s vehicle, she happily whipped out her camera.
Jaxon Arbuckle, Crawford’s son, is a 2-year-old who loves his toy car. So when Crawford saw that a local Louisville, Ky., police officer was tending to a small car wreck on her street on Tuesday, she had an idea. “I thought, ‘How cute would it be if I got a picture of Jaxon pulled over?’” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “I waited for him to finish up with his incident report and asked him if he wouldn’t mind turning the lights on and pulling Jaxon over.”
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Two-year-old Jaxon Arbuckle was excited to be pulled over in his favorite toy car, mom Ashley Crawford says. (Photo: Ashley Crawford/Facebook)
The police officer, Bill Mayo, was happy to play along. “I saw this little boy who looked to be not much older than my son, and he was running up and down the street like my son does and he just made me smile,” Mayo tells Yahoo Parenting. “He had this Little Tikes car, and his mom asked if she could snap some pictures. I would never say no to a boy like that. He kept looking up at me like I was some kind of Transformer. He kept smiling.”
Crawford says Jaxon was in heaven. “I placed Jaxon’s car on the street, and he was so excited,” the 21-year-old mom says. “When we first moved to Louisville a few months ago, he was scared of sirens, but now he loves them and he loves firetrucks. When he saw the sirens on our street he just kept yelling, ‘Look, Mommy, look!’”
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Jaxon and Mayo spent about 20 minutes together, playing hide-and-go-seek and exchanging high-fives and hugs, Crawford says. “He went above and beyond just so my son would smile,” she says. “I think it’s important to see that police officers aren’t people you should be scared of. They are the people you should turn to for help.”
Mayo says he was the lucky one. “I probably got just as much out of the interaction as Jaxon did. It made my day complete,” he says. “I’m just a big kid as it is. In a child’s world, make believe and pretend is what it’s all about. I would do it a thousand times over.”
While Mayo doesn’t get to pull over a toddler that often, he says his actions that day weren’t unusual. “I can assure you that I have witnessed countless of the exact same acts of kindness from my fellow police officers on a daily and weekly basis,” he says. “It wasn’t unusual. But it felt good to get in touch with the community and show police officers’ true character and what we’re about.”
Ashley Crawford says her son, Jaxon Arbuckle, loved hanging out with Officer Bill Mayo. (Photo: Ashley Crawford/Facebook)
That’s exactly why Crawford decided to share her photos on Facebook, and sent them to local news station WHAS-11. “You hear so much negativity about police officers. Whenever they’re on the news, it’s for something bad,” she says. “But Officer Mayo was the nicest guy I have ever met. It was such an amazing experience.”
Crawford is hoping this will be the first and last time her son gets pulled over. “My uncle, when he saw the pictures, said that Jaxon was pulled over for an OWP,” she says. “Operating with a pacifier.”
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