Opinion: A Reflection on Police Week 2016

May 23, 2016
One non-police-officer's take on Police Week, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and how attendance can emotionally affect you.

I have to say right up front, I had never been to Police Week before.  I had never visited the Law Enforcement Memorial. I had never attended the Candlelight Vigil.  I have friends and family who are officers – some for over 30 years – and I’ve always been aware of how they’ve told me Police Week and the events it holds have affected them.  I’ve never been able to understand it. I’ve never pretended to.  I’ve done my best to support them and listen when they needed to vent; I’ve tried to understand their perspective about their work and the emotional impact it has had on them. I’ve never come close to feeling what they’ve felt.

Then I went into Washington DC to visit the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial; I went and visited Tent City (hosted by DC’s FOP Lodge 1); and I watched the Candlelight Vigil.  I’m not sure how I can best describe the experience. I think “gut punch” might be the closest I can get.  It’s one of those experiences that I’m absolutely… “glad” isn’t a good word; neither is “happy.”  I feel like I did something that needed to be done. I needed to go and experience the Memorial and the events. I feel like it was a good thing to go do.  After having been there and experienced it, I can also honestly say it’s not something I’d ever look forward to doing again.

Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s necessary and I can understand the bonding that occurs among the Thin Blue Line family while they are there together. I was with a police officer friend of mine and he confided in me that it felt the same way to him.  It’s not something he looks forward to doing every year.  As we walked around the Memorial he cried in several places.  I understood why.

As I understand it there are over 19,000 names on those walls. That alone is difficult to wrap my head around.  Over 19,000 men and women from all levels of law enforcement who have died in the line of duty. That number doesn’t seem so overwhelming in the bigger scheme of things, but as you walk around the walls and see the names engraved therein; and you take in the actual physical size of the walls, and you realize how packed in those names are… it starts to sink in.  An awful lot of good men and women have died protecting and serving as they tried their best to keep the peace.

What makes it MUCH harder to deal with emotionally is when you see the memorial items survivors have placed, and those affect you on several different levels as well. There are memorial items left by surviving officers who were friends of the fallen.  Those often take the form of pictures, agency patches, candles, flowers and other such.  It’s touching that men and women who work in a profession that so often requires them to steel themselves emotionally can be so soft and sentimental in remembering their fellow officers.  The thing to remember is that they’re not JUST remembering and honoring a fellow officer; they’re remembering and honoring a friend; a family member.

The true “gut punch” though comes from seeing the items left from surviving husbands, wives, children and parents.  Even at my age I can’t imagine having to attend a funeral for a family member who had served and was lost to the line of duty, and no parent should ever have to bury their child.  All of us grow up kind of knowing and expecting that one day… someday… our parents will die and we’ll have to say goodbye to them. It’s something we hope we can manage when the day comes.  We also hope that day is a long ways off in the future.

One of the memorials I saw was a teddy bear left by a little boy who had lost his daddy.  The little boy was maybe four or five years old and I had tears in my eyes and butterflies in my stomach at just the thought of that little boy having to remember his daddy.  How did he have the strength to even place such a memorial?

Then I realized that I was thinking about a single moment in time; the moment that the child placed the memorial item for the father he’d lost.  I realized that single moment in time was merely an encapsulation of the entire year the little boy had experienced since his last visit to the Memorial.  How on earth, I wondered, did that little boy make it through the year?  How many times had he cried? How many times had he sat in his mother’s arms and told her he missed his daddy?

Knowing that’s a possible outcome, every day when they go to work, how do our law enforcement professionals go and do their duty without letting the potential emotional burden weigh them down beyond the ability to perform?

For me, that was the big lesson of the Memorial. Sure, it’s important that we realize how many have made the ultimate sacrifice.  Yes, it matters that this year 232 names were added to the walls. But what sinks in deepest for me is the fact that every officer who puts on a badge and goes to work knows full well that s/he may not return home at the end of their shift; that they may leave their spouse widowed and their children with one less parent.  They KNOW this but they go do the job anyway.  The family they leave behind ALSO sacrifices and carries the weight of risk. The family at home trusts that the officer’s family at work will help and support him/her to make sure they ALL get to the end of their shift safely – and get to go home.

Most of the time that’s how things work.  For all those represented by names on the Memorial walls, it didn’t.  They went to work one day and didn’t go home at the end of their shift.  They made the ultimate sacrifice and their families and friends mourn their loss; they honor the memories; they honor the commitment to duty that was demonstrated and acted upon.  They remember their hero and acknowledge that there were hundreds more. They come together and that shared emotional energy, while feeling like a gut punch to me, somehow helps them feel recharged.

So, it’s one of those things: everyone who has any appreciation for law enforcement should go and do it. Visit the Memorial during Police Week. Experience the feelings. See the sites. Talk to the survivors. Look at the memorial items they leave. Try to get a sense of what they feel.  It’s not hard. It overwhelms you. Offer a word of appreciation for the job THEIR fallen officer did. Offer your condolences. Appreciate what the profession demands – and so many hundreds of thousands so willingly offer.

It just might give you a whole different perspective on “the police.” It may help you to see them as people and not a job.

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