Police surprise citizens with gifts instead of tickets

After being pulled over by the police, some very lucky citizens of Lowell, Mich. got something a whole lot better than a traffic citation. Take a look.

Tap to view on News app.

As part of a campaign to do something nice for their community, the Lowell Police Department pulled off an elaborate plan in order to get each and every person pulled over for minor traffic violations something special for Christmas.

After pulling over the citizen, the officer speaks to those in the vehicle, and small talks about holiday shopping. However, he's actually trying to extract what exactly is on each person's wish list. This goes on while other volunteers, listening into the conversation via radio in a nearby department store, scramble to find the wish list items, gift-wrap them, and bring them to the unsuspecting citizens still stopped on the road within minutes.

Throughout the video, Lowell residents are shocked and amazed to receive such expensive, and incredibly personal, gifts being purchased by their local police. Overwhelmed with joy, many of the citizens hug the officers.

"Was I really getting pulled over?" asked a woman upon first seeing the gifts. "Yeah, you got pulled over. You got illegal-tinted windows," responded the police officer.

"Most of the contact police officers have with the general public is on a traffic stop, said Police Chief Steve Bukala in the video. "And you can find out a lot about that person in that 10-15 minute window, whether they're having a good day, bad day or a horrible day. Then, we got this idea, 'what if we could change that person's day in real time? What if we could change that person's day right now?'"

The video's creation was sponsored by the Up Network as part of their "Uplift Someone" campaign, that "engages people to show how easy it can be to make the world a better place by doing simple acts of kindness to family, friends, neighbors and others on a daily basis."

In an epilogue at the end of the video, the Lowell Police concluded with the following message: "While we don't encourage minor traffic violations, it's important for police departments to take the time to show their citizens just how much they care."