LOS ANGELES (WHDH) - The Los Angeles Police Department West Valley station received a pair of handcuffs in an envelope accompanied by an apology letter that they say explained a “life lesson over 60 years in the making.”
A 74-year-old man, whose name has not been released, returned the handcuffs to the department after taking them more than 60 years ago when they became loose from a LAPD juvenile officer during an altercation with another kid, he wrote in the letter.
“They stopped at my feet and I picked them up and kept them,” he recalled. “I have felt a little guilty each time I saw the handcuffs over the years, but did nothing about it.”
The man continued that his two grandsons, ages 6 and 9, were playing with plastic handcuffs during a visit with him, so he brought out the real handcuffs to “impress them.”
“They thought the cuffs were cool and asked me where I got them and I started telling them the story,” he said. “I don’t always have a real good filter, and I told them the whole story.”
The man said his grandsons were “aghast” and questioned why he would steal handcuffs from a policeman.
“I, of course, had no good explanation and I told them it was the wrong thing to do and I wasn’t proud of it and then I danced around the subject,” he continued.
The man apologized to his daughter and son-in-law, who apparently spoke to the boys about the incident after one of them brought it up when they got home.
His family forgave him but the guilt continued to wear on him.
“I can’t stop thinking that I did wrong on so many levels, and so I am returning the handcuffs with this confession and note of apology,” the letter read. “The note is addressed to you, but is partly intended for my grandsons. I will make sure each of them gets a copy of this letter in the hope that they get a different perspective than the one I left them with.”
The man also gave the LAPD a $100 donation.
“This was no ordinary letter,” the LAPD wrote on Facebook. “It was a life lesson over 60 years in the making, from a grandfather to his grandkids—that it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
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