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View Winners → Pasadena Fire and Police Honored Today
News May 15, 2014
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Photos by Terry Miller
Police and Fire personnel honored May 15 for their selfless work
By Terry Miller
Each year, America sets aside a week to salute the men and women who do the difficult, dangerous, and often thankless work of safeguarding our communities.
Our Nation’s peace officers embody the very idea of citizenship — that along with our rights come responsibilities, both to ourselves and to others.
In Pasadena as in thousands of cities around the US, May 15 is recognized as a day we pause to thank our men and women in uniform.
During Peace Officers Memorial Day and Police Week, we celebrate those who protect and serve us every minute of every day, and we honor the courageous officers who devoted themselves so fully to others that in the process they laid down their lives.
As we mourn the fallen, let us also remember how they lived. With unflinching commitment, they defended our schools and businesses. They guarded prisons; patrolled borders; and kept us safe at home, on the road, and as we went about our
lives.
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To their families, we owe an unpayable debt. And to the men and women who carry their mission forward, we owe our unyielding support.
Our Nation has an obligation to ensure that as police officers face untold risks in the line of duty, we are doing whatever we can to protect them. This means providing all necessary resources so they can get the job done, hiring new officers where they are needed most, and investing in training to prepare those on the front lines for potentially deadly situations. It also means making reforms to curb senseless epidemics of violence that threaten law enforcement officers and haunt the neighborhoods they serve.
Just as police officers never let down their guard, we must never let slide our gratitude. We should extend our thanks not only in times of tragedy, but for every tragedy averted — every accident avoided because a patrol officer took a drunk driver off the streets, every child made safer because a criminal was brought to justice, every life saved because police officers raced to the scene. In other words, we must show our gratitude every day.
