Today once again I start my day sad as I hear that 6 police officers trying to serve a drug warrant were shot in Utah. One was killed and the other five range from serious to critical. We just have to figure out something to do with the drug problem.
We went forever with no officer shot and then that routine call came in. I hate routine calls because the officers are not on their guard as much.
An older couple use to have a domestic every month when their check came in. He would drink and then it would start. They would yell and scream at each other until someone would call the cops. They would go up and talk to him (I will call him George). George would calm down and agree to go to bed and it would be over with. This continued for years and never once was it violent.
Payday came and sure enough, George was yelling and screaming again and the wife was crying. The officer responded with a rookie partner. They arrived and George’s wife was sitting at the kitchen table crying and George was locked in the bedroom. The senior officer was well acquainted with this routine so he starts to talk to the wife and tells the rookie to go knock on the bedroom door and ask George to come out.
The rookie goes over and knocks on the door and says “George, come on out and talk to us” George blows the officer away through the closed door with a shotgun and kills him.
The senior officers is stunned! This has never been violent! He radios for help and an ambulance, officer down, shots fired and crawls over and pulls his rookie partner off to the side but it is to late he is gone, his death was immediate.
The senior officer almost did not make it, he almost drank himself to death. The department carried him for a couple of years and gave him office time duty. After two years he started pulling himself together. He continued to be a good officer after he got straightened out again but he was bad also as he always had to be the one that took the dangerous job as he was to afraid of losing his partner.
To this day that is the only officer they have lost. You can go years without losing someone, think you know the people you are dealing with and one day it happens.
To all the officers out there NO CALL IS EVER ROUTINE. Be safe, go home to your family, they need you, your fellow officers need you, the world needs you. Thank you for the job that you do, you are much appreciated. Losing an officer affects every one at the department. My heart still aches for the pain the officer that lived faces every day of his life.
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