There was a protest cry last year in New York City:
“What do we want? Dead cops!”
Less than three weeks later, NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were assassinated by a gunman who had declared his intention to kill police as retribution for the shootings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. So it’s no wonder that officers might need a reminder that we place a great deal of value on their lives. An experience I had five years ago may be useful in offering such a reminder.
From Sitka to Hoonah
I was in Sitka, Alaska, training a class of DPS recruits. Two officers had been killed the week before in Hoonah, Alaska. The entire state was shocked and grieving. In the smaller law enforcement family at the academy, the pain was palpable.
Hoonah is a Tlingit community of less than 800 people on Chichagof Island off the coast from Juneau. It can only be reached by water or air. I joined the recruits, the academy staff and some of their spouses, local law enforcement and Coast Guard members for the five-and-a-half hour boat ride to a memorial service for the slain officers. Juneau Empire reporter Klas Stolpe described the scene that day in the tiny, remote village:
Hundreds of people lined the deck of the Hoonah Ferry Terminal on Wednesday, waiting for the Alaska Marine Highway System ferry Malaspina to bring the remains of Anthony Wallace and Matthew Tokuoka to this small Tlingit community.
Hundreds more waited at the terminal gates, and still hundreds more lined the streets and waited inside the Hoonah Junior/Senior High School gymnasium as the families of the two Hoonah police officers and accompanying law enforcement personnel arrived, along with the urns.
The gymnasium was standing room only. The academy staff and I sat in the bleachers with law enforcement from around the state. We were joined by Royal Canadian Mounted Police and American peace officers from as far away as Chicago and New York.
Just before the remains of Officers Wallace and Tokuoka were brought in, the recruits were seated at the front of the gymnasium alongside the dignitaries. It was fitting. They bore witness to what the path they had chosen could ask of them.
The day afforded moments of bittersweet laughter amongst the tears shed. Tony and Matt were beloved by the village and the service was a celebration of their lives and a mourning of their loss. Family and village members shared anecdotes of happier times in lives well and fully lived by the two officers.
Back at the Academy
Upon our return to the academy classroom the next morning, I began teaching the Alaska Criminal Code. Eyeing the minimum mandatory 99 years sentence — Alaska has no capital punishment — for the murder of a peace officer, one of the recruits raised his hand and asked,
“Why should a police officer’s life count more? I have a wife. I don’t think my life should be valued any more than hers.”
I paused to collect my thoughts. I looked at the sincere young man. I said:
Yesterday, one of the village members of Hoonah who spoke said she didn’t know Officers Wallace and Tokuoka but she mourned anyway. She mourned the loss of her sense of security. She said she felt assaulted — more vulnerable, less safe.
We all feel that way. Because we are reminded that you willingly place yourself between us and harm. That you are prepared every day to show the greatest love of all. John, chapter 15, verse 13 — Greater love hath no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You stand prepared to do that for strangers.
We value that. Not enough on a daily basis. But on the occasions we are reminded, we line highways, we travel far distances, we fill gymnasiums, we erect monuments and memorials — all to pay our respect.
I don’t place myself in harm’s way to protect people I don’t even know. You do. My work doesn’t hold the potential of the ultimate sacrifice. Yours does. We value you and your work with the only means we know how, knowing we can never give equal measure to what you give.
I’d lost my struggle against the tears. It seemed like a good time to take a break. When we returned, we soldiered on — something these recruits were poignantly learning to do.
The great value statutes place on the lives of police officers may be a matter of public policy. But it’s not what filled a gymnasium to overflowing in a remote village in Alaska.
Public love and respect did that.
