Video: Big Hearted Cops Toss Football, Become Heroes To Kids

A video of a Chicago police officer playing with a group of boys while another lets a kid fool around with the patrol car’s intercom has gone viral.

The scene was captured Sunday afternoon on a block that until recently had been overrun with gangs and drugs in the South Side Lawndale neighborhood..

“We is really having fun with the police,” 14-year-old Deondre Dorsey says into the intercom as his friends run to catch an orange and yellow football tossed by a Chicago cop.

The video was captured by Minister Tim Freeman, who posted it on his Facebook page under the name Tattoo Tim.

“I see the kids throwing a football with police, which is probably something their father never did … Everyone says the police is bad. I don’t believe it,” Freeman says on the video.

“It’s nice to slow down, get out of our cars, talk to parents and kids. Lotta smart kids out here, good kids,” says Officer Phil Strazzante, who lets Deondre play with the intercom.

Deondre said it was the first time his mother let him play outside in four years, or even stand in front of his house.

“They’re great kids, they’re selfless,” Strazzante explains to Freeman.

Strazzante told ABC 7 Chicago that the game of catch and hotdogs served to neighborhood kids on Sunday is part of the Chicago Police Department’s new community-based policing strategy.

“Policing is more about really bonding with the community,” the officer said.

Later, Deondre called the police officers “role models.”

By Monday evening, the video had been viewed over 220,000 times.