Police officers filed into the training room at the Police Department on Monday to the sound of Amazing Grace played on bagpipes.
The gathering was in observance of peace officers memorial day, which fell on Sunday, May 15. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed the week following Peace Officers Memorial Day to be recognized as National Police Week.
In honor of the occasion, the police training room filled with firefighters, EMTs, city staff and members of the public for a memorial service.
Captain Monty Balk was the speaker this year. Balk said he wanted to talk about an oversight in many police departments nationwide. Balk spoke about the survivors that are often left in the wake of an officer's death and the pain that they, and he, have to endure.
"The only way I could do that, as I pondered over this, was to make it personal," he said.
Balk spoke about his experience as a dispatcher in 1984, when a gunman, after killing a couple of family members, took his ex-wife hostage in a room in the police department and had a shootout with officers. Balk was so close to the shooting that in the aftermath he had to pick out splinters from his face that had hit him from bullets hitting nearby furniture.
Balk recounted numerous other situations in which he had lost fellow officers, who were often young, and in some cases had young wives and infant children.
Through the years, Balk said he tried to lock away what he called "that void, that emptiness, that loneliness," but after serving 30 years on the police force, those repressed memories had a way of returning.
In the police force he had begun serving in, Balk said he never would have opened up about his feelings or the sleepless nights or the sounds of gunfire he can hear in his head when the radio or TV aren't on. He said he had seen entire police departments torn apart because no one would acknowledge that they needed someone to talk to when first responders lost friends.
"These things do happen," Balk said "It goes beyond the benefits that are paid out to the widows... words don't solve it, money doesn't solve it. It's people being there."
Balk is retiring from the police force this year. He said multiple times that neither he, nor most other officers, ever wanted to be put in the spotlight. But the thankful words of strangers who let officers know their appreciation makes a great impact on first responders, especially in what Balk said was increasingly an "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to police.
Balk also urged first responders to open up to their friends and families.
"There is no need to wait 30 years to talk about it," Balk said. "There is no need."
General News on 05/18/2016