The Advocate
HARVEY, La. — The official memorials to David Michel Jr. on Monday attracted hundreds of law enforcement officers from around the country. But along the side of Belle Chasse Highway, dozens of ordinary people – the employees of a muffler shop and a marble warehouse, the afternoon crowd at the Yardam Lounge, and motorists who parked their cars on the side of the road – were also paying tribute with American flags in their hands.
Ronda Pridgen, the owner of the bar, bought those flags on Sunday. She said she organized the makeshift roadside memorial not because she knew Michel personally, but “to support our police officers.”
“They do a great job and they don’t deserve what this man got,” Pridgen said. “There are good people left that appreciate them.”
Gwen Plaisance had one of those flags in her left hand, her right hand over her heart, and tears in her eyes as she watched Michel’s hearse pass her by from the neutral ground.
Plaisance worked with Michel at a mangement company years ago, she said. Back then, he was still just a reserve for the the Sheriff’s Office.
“His dream was to become a police officer,” Plaisance said. When he found out that he was going to be a full-time deputy, she added, he was “elated.”
If there was any consolation to be found in the wake of Michel’s death, Plaisance said, it was in the crowd gathered by the side of the road to honor him.
“They put their lives on the line every day for us, and we don’t show enough appreciation,” Plaisance said.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand referred to Deputy David Michel Jr. as a “fallen hero” in remarks to reporters outside Believer’s Life Family Church in Gretna on Monday afternoon.
“I guess the easiest thing today is going to be to cry, quite frankly. And the hardest thing is going to be to fight back the multitude of emotions, anger being one, which is a wasted emotion in my view, quite frankly,” Normand said.
Normand also recounted stories he heard from the visitation. Just speaking in line to the funeral on Monday, he said, officers heard a story from a man about how his son had called him crying after he heard the news of Michel’s death.
The son told the father, “dad, that’s the deputy who sat me in the car and talked to me when I was about to make the wrong decision.”
“That boy’s in college today,” Normand said. “And he told our officers, but for David Michel, my son may not have made the right decision. That’s the David Michel that we know and love, that’s the David Michel that gave so much to his community. Those are the anecdotal stories that I have heard throughout the week.”
Normand also said that while laying flowers outside the memorial for Michel, a woman who worked at a nearby store told him how Michel would wait for her and her co-workers when they got off work, to provide them with a watchful eye as they walked to their cars.
Funerals like this, Normand said, “are always a gut check for us in the law enforcement community, of the dangers of what we face, and it always begs the initial question why? It can be the most rewarding job in the world, and at the same time the most devastating.”
Among the mourners paying their respects at the services for Michel were two of the area’s top-ranking federal law enforcers, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite and FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Jeffrey Sallet.
Polite described Michel’s death as “another difficult loss for the law enforcement family, particularly when you have someone like this who dies in the line of duty so violently.”
Polite recalled that Attorney General Loretta Lynch happened to be in town in January when Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Deputy Stephen Arnold was shot while serving a drug warrant.
“When I told her about this incident, it brought tears to her eyes as well. It’s been a difficult year for this particular agency,” Polite said.
Sallet said the killing of Michel underscored the region’s larger problem with violence.
“The violence has got to stop. This city is dangerous. This behavior was just outrageous,” Sallet said. “People ask me what I lose sleep over at night, and it’s exactly this: Violence.”
Copyright 2016 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.