A photo of a New York City police officer giving new boots to a barefoot homeless man in Times Square has created an online sensation. The NYPD posted the photo of Officer Lawrence DePrimo kneeling to help the man put on the boots to the department’s Facebook page. By yesterday, the photo had been shared more than 140,000 times, “liked” more than 420,000 times and received 31,000 comments. Jennifer Foster of Florence, Arizona, was visiting Times Square with her boyfriend on November 14th when they saw a shoeless man asking for change. As she approached the man, she said a police officer came onto the scene. Foster, a civilian dispatch manager with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona, took a photo and forwarded it and a note to the NYPD. Officer DePrimo, 25, who joined the department in 2010, was shocked at the attention. “It was freezing out and you could see the blisters on the man’s feet,” DePrimo said in an interview. “I had two pairs of socks and I was still cold.” They started talking; he found out the man’s shoe size: 12. DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store and – using his own money – bought a pair of all-weather boots and some socks. The store manager was so moved, he gave DePrimo his employee discount to cut the price of the $100 boots. DePrimo said keeps the receipt for the boots in his vest to remind him ‘‘that sometimes people have it worse.’’