Heartwarming stories on the Internet are a rare commodity, but that’s exactly what we have today, courtesy of a few French police officers.
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Reported on by French outlet BFMTV (translated via ResetEra), Paris police recovered some stolen video game consoles, and apparently couldn’t locate the original owners. Thus, the systems were set to be destroyed, until Paris police decided rather than destroy them, they would donate them.
So police took an unspecified amount of video game consoles to sick children at the Centre Hospitalier Sud Francilien (CHSF), a hospital in Corbeil-Essonnes, a suburb in southern Paris, as an early Christmas present.
According to newspaper Le Parisien, the systems police recovered were new and still in packages. 4,000 euros was also recovered.
Interestingly, no theft was ever reported, and the public prosecutor involved in the case ordered eventually to have the consoles destroyed, which is customary with this type of seizure. But rather than turning them into unidentifiable piles of plastic and metal, the consoles were given to the aforementioned hospital and are being used for therapeutic purposes.
“It’s one way to get them [the children] to relax and avoid anxiety and pain,” said a spokesman for the hospital.
“It’s means a lot for them [the consoles] to stay here. It’s also a way to distract them [the children] during a painful time. It’s a well-known analgesic method.
It’s unclear if any games were provided with said consoles, but presumably there was, otherwise they won’t be very useful. Though, with the sheer amount of free-to-play games these days — including most notably Fortnite — there’s still plenty of options even if you don’t have any games for your console.
At one point in my life I briefly worked in a hospital, and I can attest to the importance of things that allow people, especially children, to momentarily escape from life and forget about everything going on around them. I recall many child patients using video games specifically for this, so it’s really great to read this story and know that the children in Centre Hospitalier Sud Francilien will have something to look forward to this holiday season.
