PD Editorial: A time, place to honor cops for what they do

It should go without saying that police put themselves in harm’s way every day for the safety of the general public.

But sometimes it still needs to be said, and said again - particularly following the kind of horrific shooting that claimed the lives of two police officers in Mississippi during a routine traffic stop Saturday.

Authorities say Marvin Banks, 26, a passenger in the car had already served two terms in state prison and was facing more time behind bars for an indictment on drug charges. When the Hattiesburg, Miss. officers pulled his girlfriend over for speeding, police say Banks fatally shot Officers Benjamin Deen and Liquori Tate.

Deen was a married father with two children. Tate had become a police officer less than a year ago.

The Rev. Dwayne Higgason, pastor of a local church and a volunteer chaplain for the Hattiesburg police, said it well when told the New York Times, “I believe the average person in America loves and supports police officers. But it’s silent support, and I believe the time for silent support has passed. I believe it’s time for us to be vocal and say, ‘Thank you.’?”

He compared the nation’s current debate about officer-involved shootings in such places as Ferguson, Mo. and North Charleston, S.C. to the way soldiers were criticized during the Vietnam War.

Newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the officers’ deaths were “made even more tragic” by the fact that it occurred on the day the country began observance of Police Week, “a time when we pause to remember and honor the more than 20,000 law enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty.”

The FBI released a report this week showing that the number of sworn officers “feloniously killed in the line of duty” last year had increased 89 percent from 2013. In all, 51 officers were killed last year.

This is in sharp contrast to the record low of 27 that had occurred in 2013. Between 1980 and 2014, the average number of such deaths each year has been 64, according to the FBI.

Among those killed last year were two officers who were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn, N.Y. shortly before Christmas when they were shot at point-blank range by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill police. He then committed suicide using the same gun.

Reasonable people can agree that the dangers that officers willingly accept each day do not put them above reproach in their conduct, particularly concerning when and how they draw their weapon. But their willingness to rise to this challenge deserves the public’s respect and appreciation and an understanding that those cases that fall under the microscope of national debate are but a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of public interactions that officers encounter each day, the vast majority of which end peacefully and professionally.

As the political cartoon we published on Tuesday noted, “Cops’ lives matter, too.” They all do. But police deserve special thanks for willingly putting theirs on the line each day.