EDITORIAL: To protect, to serve, to risk death for our community

May 17—Many of us noted that flags on government buildings were at half-staff Monday. A recent meeting with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall explains why.

Marshall spoke before a small group of community leaders in Moody May 11, but the words of our chief law enforcement officer on that day rightly resonated throughout the state and beyond: "Next (week) is ... a week in which we recognize the role that law enforcement has in our community," Marshall said, just before referencing the death of Moody officer Sgt. Stephen Williams, who was killed in the line of duty in 2020. "You have specifically felt the loss here ... so you know exactly what that looks like."

Sadly, there is hardly a community in Alabama that doesn't know what that looks like.

Coming just days before the beginning of National Police Week, Marshall highlighted nine more such deaths in Alabama during the last year, including the fatal shooting of a Huntsville police officer in late March. In 2022, 238 officers across the country were killed in the line of duty. As of May 2023, 74 officers have died on their oaths.

Such sacrifice demands attention, and so it has been since the 1960s.

By a joint resolution on Oct. 1, 1962 — a year before the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department, "to protect and to serve," was published and adopted almost universally — President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-726 that declared May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day, and the calendar week in which May 15 falls as National Police Week. That week is now an annual tribute to law enforcement service and sacrifice.

More than 30 years later, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 amended the law, and Public Law 103-322 was signed by President Bill Clinton, directing that the U.S. flag be displayed at half-staff on all government buildings on May 15 each year.

Were it that there were no need to display our flags at half-staff for such reasons, but this is not the reality in which we live. Alabama measures such as the recently passed Deputy Brad Johnson Act closing loopholes in the parole system and the current charge behind the Alabama Gang Prevention Act (SB 143 and HB 191) are good beginnings toward that end, but men and women will continue to die serving and protecting our communities, our neighborhoods and our homes.

At the end of Marshall's speech in Moody, he had poignant but simple words for those who serve and risk their lives daily.

"I can't thank my friends in law enforcement enough for what they do."

Neither can we.