Lena Draper, 10, messaged the Marion Police Department on Facebook early Friday morning with a few problems, as she needed some help with her fifth-grade math homework. “I’m having trouble with my homework,” she wrote to the Marion, Ohio Police Department on Facebook. “[C]ould you help me?” The department Facebook page sent her an automated reply warning it was “not monitored 24/7,” but less than two hours later, Lieutenant B. J. Gruber responded, “What’s up?” “I need a little help with my homework,” Lena wrote back in a series of messages. “I don’t understand (8+29) x 15?” Gruber directed: “Do the numbers in the parenthesis first so in essence, it would be 37 x 15” “Ok now if I had this (90+27) + (29+15) x 2,” Lena asked. To which someone at the department replied, “Take the answer from the first parenthesis plus the answer from the second parenthesis and multiply that answer by two.” Lena’s mom, Molly Draper, said she was tickled that the police department tried to help her daughter with her homework. “I didn’t believe her and asked for a screen shot. I thought it was pretty funny. And I love that they went ahead with it.” She praised the police department for “truly building relationships with the community.”
In a comment, the police department thanked Draper for her praise and said it was “happy to offer her some help. 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. Have a great rest of the weekend!” Although the department went above and beyond its duties, in a math faux pas, the answer given to Lena ended up being incorrect, as pointed out by a friend of Lena’s mother. (The correct answer is to add the numbers in the second parentheses and multiply only that by 2, then add it to the numbers in the first parentheses.) But Gruber is hoping people will give him an “A” for effort. “Hoping it is truly the thought that counts since apparently I cannot!” he joked. “Especially since the answer was wrong, it was very nice for Molly to acknowledge our attempt to help her daughter with some math homework.” In response to the incident, the Marion police department posted on its Facebook page that it is a full-service police department that makes every emergency a cause to be answered. When asked if Lena’s math problem ever got answered correctly, her mom said, “I hope so. But we’ll see when she gets her paper back.” Source: abcnews
