That Thin Blue Line of Love (Updated)

From today’s reading, May 10, 2015:

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15: 12-13

Just last week it was New York City Police Officer (and fellow Long Islander) Brian Moore, age 25.

Today, two more are gone: Hattiesburg, Mississippi Police Officers Benjamin Deen, age 34, and Liquori Tate, age 24.

Young men, young lives.

Gone.

They are three among the countless thousands each day who – with no little fear, no little trepidation – don the blue uniform of peace to become our street warriors.

We’ve entrusted them to protect us, to maintain order, and to keep us out of harm’s way. They fight our domestic battles so that our days can remain peaceful, our work productive, our families safe.

They show up knowing that today’s “routine” traffic stop could well their last. Or that someone else’s domestic dispute could forever tear apart their own families.

Their weekly pay doesn’t come close to matching their everyday risk.

Every split-second decision, made under a threat of death, becomes fodder for some arm-chair pundit with an over-bloated opinion that serves only to mask his own oversized gutlessness. All too often, politicians and prosecutors alike fuel the negativity in order to advance some political agenda, enhance their power, increase their name recognition.

Yes of course there are some who abuse the power entrusted to them. They need to be rooted out and brought expeditiously to justice.

But the vast majority are modest, hard-working, caring men and women.  Most want nothing more than to serve a public that all too often takes them for granted.

And most realize that if they are, in fact, being taken for granted, such is merely ready proof that they are doing their job and doing it exceptionally well.

Officers Moore, Deen, and Tate gave their lives protecting us.

They embody, extraordinarily well, that thin blue line of love.

Well done good and faithful servants.

May eternal rest be granted unto you.

UPDATE:  The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reminds us that 117 officers were killed in 2014. Unfortunately, 2015 is well on its way to catching up. The organization is holding its annual candlelight vigil tonight, May 13, 2015. More information can be found at www.nleomf.org.

Peace

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, NYC Police Department, Public Domain