9/11 Friday Friends

There is a special bond that develops among friends who have never met.  We are friends in a brotherhood.  Perhaps you could call it a fraternity.  We experience the same thrills and fears.  We feel the same highs from doing the exact same things.  We experience the same sadness over common losses.  Heroics are seldom recognized but occur multiple times on a daily basis. Some of those heroics are small acts of kindness or service while others are life threatening. At times the threats are more than just a threat.

I don't know. It either takes a special kind of stupid or a special kind of devotion to run into a life-threatening situation while others run out.  It's what you do when you swear an oath. 

The oath doesn't say anything about serve and protect.  The oath says enforce and defend.  The oath is all about enforcing the laws and defending the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.  Yet the job is all about serving and protecting the public.  For each arrest that is made a victim somewhere is being served.  For each traffic citation issued, there is a reminder, whether learned or not, that we are a nation of laws and that most of us really do want to live in an orderly society.

I do not know the 60 NYPD and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD) officers who lost their lives at the World Trade Center 14 years ago today.  I also do not know the other 71 police officers who have since died from injuries or exposure to toxic fumes and chemicals as a result of their rescue efforts at the World Trade Center.  And, I do not know the five federal law enforcement officers who died doing what they loved doing at the WTC.  I've never seen them, spoken to them, or emailed them.  But, I know them.  I know their hearts.  I know their dedication.  I know the fears that they faced and I know the satisfaction that they experienced at the end of a shift.  I know what they know, what they knew: what it's like to go home at the end of the day.  Unlike them, I do not know what it is like to know that you will not be going home at the end of your watch.

Oh, yes, I've run into a burning building looking for victims (who weren't there).  I've stared death in the face a time or two.  I've had good days and I’ve had bad days.  There were little acts of heroics that maybe resulted in a cut finger or a scraped knuckle.  More often than not the heroics consisted of changing out somebody’s flat tire or showing third graders what the inside of a police care looks like.  And yes, I've ruined a few people's days and a few of my uniforms.  But, at the end of the day I always went home.

Let me tell you just a couple of things about this fraternal order.  Just because you are a member you don't always give or get a "professional courtesy" when you are caught speeding or running a stop sign or red light.  However, as a police officer you can travel across this country and walk into any police station and sit down to a cup of coffee or bottle of soda and talk about common experiences for about as long as you want.  Officers from two different departments can work together on a common crime "in progress" and work together seamlessly even though they may have never seen each other before in their lives.  As a police officer in one jurisdiction you can call a police officer in another jurisdiction and request that something will be done and it will get done.  As a police officer you realize that your own badge is tarnished when some idiot cop on the other side of the country dishonored his or her badge.  As a police officer, your heart aches whenever another police officer somewhere, anywhere has died in the line of duty.  You see, we are friends.  We are family.  Whether the uniform is dark blue or light blue, brown, tan, gray, white, or green—active or retired, we've all run the scenario through our minds a thousand times.  And we never forget.

So here's to 136 friends that died either 14 years ago today or in the months and years since then from illnesses and injuries suffered on that day.  Here's to the mommies and daddies, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, chaplains, chiefs, commanders, supervisors, line officers, and my friends who ran into buildings while others ran out of those same buildings 14 years ago today.

And lest we forget, there were 343 firefighters and 8 paramedics who also perished on that day whose heroics are not to be diminished in any way, shape, or form in my tribute to my 136 friends.