While you and your family celebrate the holidays together at home, we are patrolling your neighborhoods – checking your property, your yard, your streets, looking for anything or anyone out of place. We are the ones that venture into the dark, not knowing what if anything awaits us, often to protect many of you we have never even met.
You spend the evening with your family warm and safe indoors, many enjoying a few drinks in front of a warm fireplace. We’re outside trying to stay warm, dealing with the winter elements – freezing rain, snow, sometimes dangerous road conditions, or maybe even a blizzard. We’re out there waiting for our 911 Dispatchers to advise us when someone else in the county needs our help.
You’ve got your kids with you, maybe grandkids, also grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. The whole family is together for this joyous occasion. Our families are spending another holiday without us. This was our year to work. Hopefully we make the rotation next year so we can take time off for them. They understand we make these sacrifices to help keep our communities safe, to help people in need, and to do our little part to make our communities a better place for them to live in. They understand our sacrifices are also their sacrifices.
Your Christmas Eve dinner is ready, a feast the whole family has pitched in to help with. The smell of turkey, ham, and warm pie fill the air, those smells that make us think of Christmas’s past. The house also smells of fresh pine from the real Christmas tree in the living room. We’ve been busy tonight so we haven’t had a chance to get much for a meal – chips and a pop at the local gas station, maybe a piece of pizza or pre-made sandwich. Later we’ll stop in to check on our gas station attendants who are also sacrificing on Christmas. We’ll refill our coffee cups and continue our patrols thru the night.
You’ve finally got the kids to settle down for the night, all excited about presents and that visit from Santa overnight. Everyone’s tucked in for a warm night’s sleep. If we are lucky enough to live in the zone we work in, we’ll try and stop by to say goodnight to the kids. If we’re too busy, we’ll just have to call when we can. We’ll wish them Merry Christmas over the phone and say goodnight to the kids. Hopefully we can call before they go to bed.
Your kids are in bed and now its adult time – you sit and play cards, games, and visit with family and loved ones reminiscing about the highlights from your evening and all the great memories of past Christmas celebrations in your home. While patrolling your neighborhoods, we all have those homes that stir up old memories as well. The crash we worked a few months ago where we pulled a child from the wreckage who didn’t make it. It’s hard to forget the reaction we got when we walked into that home to tell those parents that their child was gone – or the emotional feeling of just wanting to go home and hug our kids and tell them that we love them. We worry about those parents tonight. We think about that incident every time we drive by that house – a memory we’d love to forget – but can’t. We hope and pray we don’t get another crash like that tonight on Christmas.
Your kids wake you up early, all excited about opening Santa’s presents and celebrating Christmas Day. You’re rested and ready to share this amazing day with your family. We’ve been asleep for an hour or two before our kids are waking us up excited about opening Santa’s presents and celebrating Christmas Day. We finally finished our shift a few hours earlier after a busy evening and quietly sneaked into our homes around 5am. We took off our uniform, grabbed a quick snack from last night’s big meal, and headed to bed trying not to wake up the kids or our spouse. We’ll go downstairs now and see the kids open their gifts, while trying not to think about some of the things that we saw last night. Then it’s back to bed for a better part of Christmas Day. We’ll go back to work at 6pm and do it all over again.
In spite all of the sacrifices many of us will make this Christmas, and some of the anti-law enforcement rhetoric we endure from the main stream media and other radical groups, we remain very proud of this profession that we love. We’re proud of our uniform, we’re proud of our badge, and we’re extremely proud of our flag. We couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Helping you is our calling, it’s our passion, and it’s truly what motivates us.
The intent of this column is not to make you feel sorry for law enforcement and public safety, it’s simply to remind you of some of the many sacrifices these men and women make for our communities – especially during the holidays.
It’s also important to think about the sacrifices made by all our Public Safety Partners serving our communities over the holidays – our 911 Dispatchers working to keep everyone safe, our local Ambulance and Fire Department members (many who are volunteers) working side by side with us on emergency calls, and the medical professionals saving lives at our area hospitals. Don’t forget our local tow companies who are also out there helping us day and night. How about the convenience store attendants around the county who are also there to make sure you and Public Safety has everything we need during the holiday – fuel, hot coffee, snacks, etc.
This Christmas, if you see your local law enforcement or public safety professionals out working the streets, take a minute to thank them for their service and sacrifice. Your “thank you” means a lot to all of them, especially during the holidays.
Your Sheriff,
Scott
This post was originally published in December 2017 on Sheriff Rose’s blog.
