Published: May 14, 2009 10:47 pm         

Risking their lives to keep us safe

There are times when the last person in the world you want to see is a police officer.

Like when you’re in a hurry to get home from work and you’re going just a little too fast down a residential street.

Or when you come to that traffic light and you just know you’ll get through on the yellow, except it turns red just before you hit the intersection.

And nobody ever comes to a complete stop at stop signs, especially when there’s nobody coming. Who does a little rolling stop hurt, anyway?

Our thoughts are unprintable when we see the squad car’s light bar flashing in our rear-view mirror.

“Why don’t they pick on somebody else,” we whine to ourselves. “Don’t they have real criminals to catch?”

The answer, of course, is, yes, they do. And when they pull us over for speeding or otherwise ignoring traffic laws, they are doing it.

There are other times the only person in the world you want to see is a police officer.

If your business has been robbed, or your home, if you or one of your family members have been harmed, or threatened with harm, if someone you love is missing, if someone has wronged you, you want a police officer at your side immediately, if not sooner.

We expect the police to keep us safe, but to leave us alone until we need them. We lose sight of the fact protecting the public safety often involves protecting other members of the public from speeders and red light-runners like us.

We expect the police to be like the ones we see on TV, able to solve complex crimes in less than an hour.

Above all, we don’t expect them to die. But thus far in 2009, 46 law enforcement officers nationwide have died in the line of duty, and it’s only the middle of May. In 2008 the number was 134, including three in Oklahoma.

This is National Police Week, and today in Washington the 28th annual National Police Officers’ Memorial Day Services will be held at the U.S. Capitol. This service will honor and remember all law enforcement officers who have given their lives in the line of duty.

Oklahoma has lost 439 police officers in its history, three of them members of Enid Police Department. Oddly, all three deaths have come on Wednesdays. June 26, 1895, City Marshall E.C. Williams was shot and killed while trying to break up a fight between Enid Daily Wave editor J.L. Isenberg and Registrar of the U.S. Land Office, R. W. Patterson. Patterson shot Williams in the chest, but the mortally wounded officer shot Patterson in the head. Both died.

Jan. 10, 1906, Marshall Thomas Radford was shot and killed by brothel owner John Cannon, who was angry Radford had shut down his illegal enterprise.

July 8, 1936, police officer Cal Palmer and his partner responded to a suspicious person call in a local bar. The suspect, Lawrence DeVol, asked Palmer and his partner if he could finish his beer before he was arrested. Palmer agreed, but when DeVol put down his beer stein he picked up a gun and fired, killing Palmer and wounding his partner, Ralph Knarr.

In addition, 33 Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers have been killed, including Troop J’s Chris Van Krevelen, who died in an automobile accident Thanksgiving Day 2002 while responding to reports of a train-car collision near Enid. On May 26, 1978, known in OHP lore as “Black Friday,” troopers Houston F. “Pappy” Summers of Enid and Billy G. Young of Woodward were killed by a pair of prison escapees in southeast Oklahoma.

Police officers are willing to risk their lives to keep us safe. Somehow saying thank you seems woefully inadequate, but to law enforcement officials throughout northwest Oklahoma, thank you all the same.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.