Deadly Time For Police Officers

I have honored several Mexican police officers for their bravery in standing up to the corruption and the criminal cartels in Mexico at the cost of their lives.  And these officers are truly heroes.  In the United States, police officers, unfortunately, are also frequently called on to make their ultimate sacrifice, and that terrible price seems to be required more and more frequently as 2011 rolls on.  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/24/national/main7279747.shtml

For instance, from the past Sunday to the past Monday, eleven police officers were killed across the United States, making it one of the deadliest twenty-four hour periods for law enforcement in several years.  Most of these murders involved shootings of multiple police officers in a single incident.  A significant number of these were in warrant service situations in private residences.  One incident was a traffic stop in which both officers were shot after making contact with person who had apparently only committed a minor violation. 

Just a day after that deadly twenty-four hours, four officers were shot in a Detroit precinct house.  None of these officers died, but the suspect's intent was certainly to murder them.  He was killed by officers.  The suspect that killed two officers in St. Petersburg, Florida Monday morning was killed, but that offered little comfort to the remaining officers and the families of the slain policemen.  I use the term "policemen" as habit, but the dead include police women as well. 

It appears that suspects are more willing than ever to kill our police officers.  The "experts" offer various "answers" as to why deadly attacks on police officers are on the rise across our nation since 2010, and continuing into 2011.  In the end, the criminal chooses his own course, to take an officer's life.  The criminal alone is then responsible to receive his punishment in court.  I send my prayers up with Americans all over the nation on behalf of those fallen officers. 

Each time someone attacks and murders an officer, it is an attack on each of us as well, and an attack on our system of government.  Police officers stand between us and the kind of chaos seen in Mexico and other nations around the world.  I hope that each of us will do our part to support police officers in the dangerous work they do, help out the families of fallen officers, and do our part in court if the occasion arises for anyone to sit on a jury in judgment of one of these vicious criminals.  For one thing, to exact justice, and for the other, to protect ourselves from that person who is willing to kill a police officer, because he is clearly able to kill any one of us, as well.

To police officers who may be reading, I owe you my gratitude, and I thank you for your service.  But most of all, I pray for your safety each time you pin on your badge and walk out into the streets, our own streets, to protect and to serve, in spite of the risk that, though always there, never stops you from your job, and never slows you in your duty to keep the rest of us safe.