CHESTERFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI — Officer Matt McPhillips, one of the Chesterfield Township Police Department's new recruits, was determined to set things right Thursday after he saw a little girl named Zain standing by the side of the road in distress.

He pulled his cruiser on the street and flipped on the lights. The driver of the truck didn't stop. McPhillips activate the siren, and the driver pulled over, unaware of what transgression she might have committed. It wasn't a crime, exactly, except in the eyes of the little girl, who only wanted a cup of ice cream. The family has tried to catch the truck before but consistently miss it, her mother wrote on Facebook.

"Zain got her ice cream and the ice cream truck lady nearly had a heart attack thinking she was getting pulled over," Cathlene Marcum wrote in an account of what happened on her Facebook page. She asked others to share the post "to support all police officers and show them some love."

The timing of the gesture couldn't have been better at a time when every day seems to dawn to a new headline about police violence. In comments on the post, one mom said McPhillips' gesture showed children that police are a positive force in their lives and shouldn't be feared.

"I have to tell my kids constantly that police are here to protect us," Katie Ellen Sanborn wrote. "They see police and get worried."

"Yes!" Marcum wrote. "Zain was starting to be like that, too. I would keep telling her things to know they are good, but I think this said it all for her!"

McPhillips was working overtime and filling in the gaps in some shifts when he saw Zain's sad face. "We're really proud of him," Chesterfield police Sgt. Clinton Bowerson told WXYZ-TV, noting the gesture "fits his character."