INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — While more than 100 people, about half of them in uniform, gathered near the steps of the Indian River County Courthouse Monday to honor law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty, across town an apparently mentally ill man was threatening to kill police officers.
The man told the emergency dispatch operator he had a gun and a knife, according to authorities. “He is going to shoot everyone,” dispatch relayed to authorities on scene.
After a chase on foot near The Palms apartment complex, the man was captured and no officers were harmed. Indian River County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Eric Flowers said the man was taken for psychological evaluation under Florida’s Baker Act, as he was also threatening to harm himself. As is the case with this type of incidents, the man’s identity is not being released. “He was not arrested. It’s a mental health matter,” Flowers said.
Sometimes the hazard to police presents itself in the form of the unstable or violent person, or the one who is wasted on drugs or alcohol. Other times the danger comes from getting in the middle of a nasty domestic dispute, from knocking on a door to serve a warrant or from going undercover to build a case. Then there are tragic incidents like the one in Hattiesburg, Miss. last Saturday night when two officers were gunned down on what started as a routine traffic stop.
County Commission Chairman Wesley Davis read a document dedicating this week to honoring law enforcement and, in his remarks, recognized the sacrifice of the two officers and how every police family feels the loss and weeps for the two lost men.
Davis, the father of a son not much younger than the 25-year-old rookie officer killed, noted that Sunday was Mother’s Day and said how unnatural it would be to lose a child. “They were some mother’s child,” he said of the two killed at the hands of armed assailants, who left them in the street to die and fled in a patrol car.
Officers wore black bands over their shields on Monday to mourn the dead, many of the black bands depicting the “thin blue line” an emblem representing law enforcement as a barrier between society and evil.
Confronting that evil, and potentially dying in the process, is a reality that law enforcement officers face every day when they kiss their loved ones good-bye and report for duty, said Deputy Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl, the keynote speaker at this year’s ceremony honoring fallen officers as part of National Police Week, which runs through Saturday. Bakkedahl admitted that he doesn’t think about those things happening to him on the job, because he’s grateful to law enforcement for protecting citizens and keeping the “wolves” away.
But that’s not how police are often viewed today in the headlines, and in social media.
Bakkedahl said he remembers gathering for the same ceremony five or six years ago and public safety in general was in crisis, a financial crisis due to the recession. Budgets were stretched to the max, he said, often balanced “on the backs of public safety.”
But today’s crisis, Bakkedahl said is a different one, and one that makes the job even more perilous.
“It’s a crisis of perception. The media may tell you it’s a crisis of confidence in law enforcement,” Bakkedahl said, citing a list of statistics on deadly force incidents by officers, on police deaths and on the number of times police interact with citizens, more than 100,000 times last year for the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office alone. “The numbers show you’re not out murdering your fellow citizens. How do you battle that? You’ve got to find a way to tell your story.”
You need to make your case in a way that not only the public can understand and appreciate, but that you can understand and appreciate,” he said.
To illustrate the role police – and by police he included every level of law enforcement in every capacity which men and women serve – play in society, Bakkedahl drew from an analogy in the popular movie, “American Sniper,” the analogy of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs.
Sheep of the flock, Bakkedahl said, are the average peaceable, law-abiding citizen who could become a victim of crime. “They’re the kind, gentle, productive members of society,” Bakkedahl said. “They are the people who you’re there to protect.”
Sheep include society’s most vulnerable – its children, its elderly or its disabled. But sheep also include those with much to lose in the way or property or loved ones, and businesses with goods to steal. “The sheep is the individual who refuses to believe that evil is out there,” Bakkedahl said, adding that bliss of ignorance comes from not having seen on a daily basis what the average cop sees on the beat.
Wolves are the predators, the criminals who set out to hurt the flock, and thankfully, Bakkedahl said, wolves represent a very small percentage of society. Sheepdogs are the protectors of the flock. “When we talk about law enforcement as the sheepdog, it’s an honorable profession,” he said.
“Sheep don’t always like the sheepdog, in some ways the sheepdog reminds them of the wolf,” he said. “The sheepdog is the guy at their car window writing a traffic ticket, but the sheep’s opinion of the sheepdog changes as soon as the wolf is at the door. You patrol the outside perimeter of the herd to keep the wolves away.”
“The sheepdog must never harm the sheep,” but he said the toughest part of police work can be separating the wolves from the sheep.
Bakkedahl left the crowd of elected officials, municipal manager, leaders of all the area’s law enforcement agencies and members of the public with the questions, “What is worth defending? What is worth dying for?”
Indian River Shores Public Safety Director, Chief Rich Rosell read the names of all of Florida’s fallen officers who lost their lives in 2014. Fortunately in its history, Indian River County has only lost one officer. Deputy Sheriff Richard Raczkoski died of gunfire on Sept. 23, 1986 while investigating a suspicious person talking on a pay phone outside a convenience store. Police chiefs from Vero Beach, Sebastian and Fellsmere, plus the Florida Highway Patrol, laid wreaths at a monument to honor fallen soldiers, both locally and nationally.
The Indian River County Fire-Rescue Honor Guard presented the colors, showing solidarity with their brothers in law enforcement. Seven officers that make up the Multi-Agency Honor Guard offered a 21-gun salute and a Sheriff’s Deputy sang an inspirational song. “Taps” was played and the ceremony finished off with “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipe. Sheriff’s Office helicopters buzzed the ceremony in honor of fallen comrades.
Sheriff Deryl Loar, whose agency hosted and emceed the event, recognized the Sheriff’s Office’s lead victims’ advocate, Shirley Roseman, who is retiring this year and who, for more than two decades has organized all the events like Monday’s ceremony.
On Friday, which is the official Peace Officers Memorial Day, local agencies are asking residents and businesses to fly flags at half staff and to thank law enforcement officers for their service.
Staff writer Keith Carson contributed to this report.