Honoring their sacrifice

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Monday, Dec. 31, 2007 | midnight

Police officers all over the country are preparing for tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations. For them, the celebrations mean crowd control, drunks, fights, vandalism, crime, accidents and, quite possibly, danger.

But with the exception of more people out on the town, tonight will not be so very different from any night or day when they are on duty. Police officers on every shift every day are apt to deal with volatile situations that have the potential to escalate -- to the point where they risk injury or even their lives.

This was a particularly tragic year for police officers nationally. According to two police officer associations, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, based in Washington, D.C., and the Missouri-based Concerns of Police Survivors, 186 police officers were killed in the line of duty this year.

That is the highest number of police officers killed in a year since 1989, with the exception of 2001, when 60 police officers in New York City lost their lives within hours of each other during the 9/11 attacks.

Craig Floyd, chairman of the Memorial Fund, said during an interview with the Associated Press, “Most of us don't realize that an officer is being killed in America on average every other day.”

That is a sobering statistic, one we hope is drastically reduced in the new year. We also hope it is widely learned and remembered. Police officers are not always shown the gratitude that the dangers of their jobs command.

One way locally to show our respect would be to visit Police Memorial Park. It is located off West Cheyenne Avenue at Metro Academy Way, just east of North Hualapai Way.

Learning the names of the fallen officers, along with a moment of silence in the park, is the least we can do to honor their ultimate sacrifice.