By William Kates, The Associated Press
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- Everyone said Onondaga County Deputy Glenn Searles had a special way of comforting families and loved ones when there was a death to deal with.
On Thursday, more than 2,000 fellow police and law enforcement officials from New York and the Northeast gathered to offer comfort to Searles’ family and give a hero’s send-off to the young deputy who was killed in a roadside crash while helping a stranded motorist.
“Glenn didn’t measure success by the amount of stocks he had, or the number of arrests that he made or the number of tickets that he wrote. He measured life by the lives that he touched and by the lives that he helped,” said Father Dennis Hayes, the sheriff department’s chaplain.
“He never fully realized how many lives he touched. We never knew. I hope he knows now,” Hayes told more than 1,000 mourners gathered inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Syracuse.
Outside the church, another 1,000 uniformed police officers, firefighters and other law enforcement and emergency personnel stood at attention in the cold and an off-and-on drizzle, forming a ring around the fountain at Columbus Circle and listening to the service broadcast over loudspeakers.
Departments from as far away as Vermont, Tennessee, Washington, D.C. and Maryland sent representatives. Several surrounding police agencies took over road patrols in the county so Searles’ comrades could attend the mass.
Searles, who grew up locally in Liverpool, was killed Saturday night when he was struck by a minivan while assisting a stranded motorist on Interstate 481 in DeWitt, just east of Syracuse.
Although a deputy for only two years, Searles had worked in the medical examiner’s office for six years and was widely known by other deputies and prosecutors.
Hayes said Searles approached his job with gusto and enthusiasm and “a smile on his face whether it was 7 in the morning or 7 at night.”
“We were always impressed with his ability to help at the scenes where there was death involved,” Sheriff Kevin Walsh told the audience.
“He knew how to comfort families. He always made the effort to help those people through those very difficult first hours immediately surrounding the death of a loved one,” Walsh said.
The sheriff said a woman called him this week to tell him that not too long ago a young deputy had talked her out of committing suicide and arranged for her to get the help she needed to get her life back in order.
She said she didn’t know the deputy’s name until she saw Searles photograph in the newspaper.
“He was gracious. He was patient about answering endless questions ... acting as an excellent teacher, displaying a real pride in his department and having a respectful, good humor about the variety of personalities he encountered on patrol,” Walsh said.
“Glenn will be missed. Glenn will be mourned. Glenn will be memorialized. But Glenn’s work will be carried on. He will live on in the lives that he has influenced, and in the lessons, standards and examples that he set,” the sheriff said.
At the conclusion of the mass, the hundreds of deputies and police officials in attendance marched Searles’ casket, snapping off a salute as they passed.
Before the mass, a private service was held for the family at a funeral home in Lafayette. Searles’ survivors include his mother and father, a brother, a stepbrother, two stepsisters and a fiancee. A motorcade of dozens of police cars escorted the funeral hearse to the church.
Searles is Onondaga County’s second deputy to die in the line of duty. The first was Deputy David Clark, who was shot to death in February 1987 while transporting a prisoner.