Every life matters

Like every other officer with whom I’ve worked, I received threats. Most were the products of drunks or petty miscreants who could think of nothing better to say than to tell me he or she would “get me” one day. I thought little of it, but I was a careful person, particularly after I had children. A couple of those threats I took a bit more seriously, like the one man who managed to get hold of my unlisted phone number and call me at home and the guy I sent to prison for life who said his goal was to kill a cop.

Officers of the law have always been targets, but now they are targets simply because they have a badge, not because of specific actions. Vigilance has always been part of the job; you watch your back and the backs of fellow officers, no matter their agency. That quality of being willing to sacrifice for others—especially fellow LEOs—has always been part of the job. It’s the same type of commitment and valor that troops on the battlefield have for one another. You don’t question whether or not you would place yourself in harm’s way for another. You simply do it and you do it instinctively.

When I was a detective, my late partner was on SWAT. We carried a very large and lethal weapon with us in case he was called out while we were on the road. I had never fired it. One day he took me to the range and pulled it out of the car, set up a paper target and told me: “You need to learn to use this gun. If I am ever down and can’t get to it, it would give you a fighting chance.” And he taught me how to use it.

He didn’t do that because he wanted me to save his bacon, although I certainly would have moved mountains to do so. He did that because he wanted me to survive, no matter what happened to him. Ours was a bond that superseded every other bond in my life. And no, there was nothing like “that” between us. He was younger than I and we were both happily married with young children. Our bond wasn’t a male/female bond, it was the unbreakable blue line that bound us. It was the knowledge that no matter what happened out there on the road, we would lay down our lives for one another. Without question, without compunction, without thought. Period.

For LEOs, this loyalty doesn’t extend to only to officers in one’s own department, it also includes every police officer, every sheriff’s deputy, every state law enforcement officer, every trooper, every federal agent. Every man and woman behind the badge constitutes family. And, on a daily basis, each and every single one of the officers on our department not only put their lives on the line for one another, but did the same thing for the community. We guarded it with our lives, as well as our hearts.

This is what LEOs everywhere do. They don’t weigh one life against another for value. They act because it’s been ingrained into them as muscle memory. And they put their own safety dead last, behind the safety of their fellow officers and the people they serve.

And that’s why I’m saddened when I see groups like Black Lives Matter demanding the deaths of LEOs. While some of these protestors endorse murder, the very officers they condemn place their own lives on the line to protect the people who want them dead.

That blue line may be thin, but it’s forged from steel.