Cop Gives Ohio 5th Grader Bad Math Advice; America Still Loves Him

Children are taught that police officers are their friends and to go to them if they’re in trouble. For a Marion, Ohio, fifth-grader, the trouble was with a math problem she was struggling to solve. Then she remembered a T-shirt she had been given promoting the Marion Police Department’s community outreach program. Why not run the problem by a helpful police officer, 10-year-old Lena Draper thought.

So, she sent a Facebook message to the police department. “I’m having trouble with my homework,” Lena messaged, “could you help me?”

An automatic response followed, instructing Lena to call 9-1-1 if it was an emergency. Though no doubt urgent in the mind of a 10-year-old, the math problem didn’t quite require lights and sirens. Lena let it be.

Then, to her surprise, Marion police Lt. B.J. Gruber answered.

“Ok, with what?” he responded.

“Well I don’t understand (8+29)x15.”

“Do the numbers in the parenthesis first so in essence it would be 37 x 15,” Gruber messaged.

“Ok,” Lena responded, “now if I had this (90+27) + (29+15) x 2. Which one would I do first?”

“Take the answer from the first parenthesis plus the answer from the second parenthesis and multiply that answer times two,” Gruber explained. “Work left to right doing the work inside the parenthesis first.”

Lena's mom, Molly Draper, posted a screenshot of the tutoring session on Facebook, and it’s been shared nearly 3,000 times. “My daughter. Cause … She's my daughter,” Draper wrote, adding, “Thank you, Marion, Ohio Police Department, for truly building relationships with the community.”

Draper told CBS News she was “happy but not surprised that they responded so quickly.”

“They are wonderful with their communication with the community,” she said.

Gruber, though helpful, got it wrong, some Facebook commenters pointed out.

“Buuuut after doing the parentheses, she should actually multiply the (29+15) times 2, then add the (90+27),” one user pointed out.

To solve such problems, remember PEMDAS (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication and division, addition and subtractions).

Gruber, who manages the Marion Police Department’s Facebook page, accepted the critique of his work with humor.

“Happy to offer her some help,” he wrote. “Next time we will use one of our ‘lifelines’ for the math questions. Thanks for the kind comments. We love Marion but especially true with our kids. …”

Gruber does love engaging with the public and told NBC News it’s his “favorite part” of his job. He admitted, though, that “math’s not my favorite subject.”

“Hoping it is truly the thought that counts since apparently I cannot!” he told CBS. “Especially since the answer was wrong, it was very nice for Molly to acknowledge our attempt to help her daughter with some math homework.”

Photo by AJ Cann via Flickr Commons