IMPD Sgt. Jo Moore recalled the first time she made a traffic stop after returning to duty following the fatal shooting of her son, Officer David Moore. It was last month.
"I marked out on the traffic stop and when I grabbed the door handle to get out of the car I looked at David's badge and in my mind I said, 'Okay, David, lets do this," said Sgt. Moore.
A small replica of David Moore's badge is mounted in his mother's patrol car. Moore died of fatal wounds he suffered while making an east side traffic stop on January 23rd when investigators say he pulled over a felon armed with a gun.
"Its been 40 days since David died," said Sgt. Moore as she guided her patrol car along the streets of the city's southeast side. "Sundays are the hardest day for me because I always think, well, you know, six weeks ago this, five weeks ago... especially at 9:01. That's the time the run came out. That's really hard."
After taking a couple weeks off duty to grieve, Jo Moore, a 26-year veteran of the force and wife of a retired police lieutenant, knew it was time to report for duty again.
"I needed to come back to work for myself, for David. David's death affected the entire department. We're going to continue on because he would want us to. We're going to continue on, do the best we can and we're going to make this city even better than it was. I do think David's death brought the community and the police department back together and we do need to build on that."
Moore said the way she and David's father, retired Lt. Spencer Moore, will do that is to focus public attention on illegal guns on the streets of Indianapolis. Spence Moore has publicly called for more gun education programs and tougher gun crime prosecutions.
Everyday she's on patrol, Jo Moore swings by a south side post office branch to mail out thank you notes to some of the 1800 people who sent their condolences in the wake of David's murder.
"I keep telling you, it's hard to be a survivor," said Moore as her police radio crackled with the sound of other officers responding to runs and requests for help. "But David would say, 'Yeah, mom, I'm right where I want to be.' There's no way that David would've wanted someone else to die that day. If one of our officers would've had to go, he would've stepped up to the plate... which he did."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
