Ohio 5th-grader gets math help from police department

Tuesday, February 21, 2017
An Ohio 10-year-old needed help with her math homework, so she turned to her local boys in blue.

When Lena Draper sent the Marion, Ohio Police Department a Facebook message asking for help with her math homework, they didn't hesitate to respond.

She posted the math problem (8 + 29) x 15. Someone answered back with help, "Do the numbers in the parenthesis first so in essence it would be 37 x 15."

Lena sent a more complex to the page, "(90 + 27) + (29 + 15) x 2"

The department replied, "Take the answer from the first parenthesis plus the answer from the second parenthesis and multiply that answer by two."

Despite the fact the answer given to the second question was an incorrect one, Lena's mother, Molly Draper was grateful for the help. "Thank you, Marion, Ohio Police Department, for truly building relationships with the community," she wrote in a Facebook post.

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 told ABC News.

In response to the incident, the Marion PD 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."
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