Honoring Fallen Police Officers
Floor Speech
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Mr. KNIGHT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Culberson putting this together and allowing us time to talk about our heroes on the street.
During your shift as a police officer or as a sheriff's deputy, you go into roll call or you go into briefing and start your day with info or assignments. You check out your equipment. You go over and you get in your car. You go to the gas pumps and you fill up the gas. And you might talk to some of the other officers or the other deputies about what is happening on the street or what happened the night before, and you start your day.
Your day might start off with talking to your partner and trying to find out a little bit more about them if you don't know them, because that happens on a day-to-day basis--new officers are put in with officers every day--just trying to find out what your thoughts are, what your tactics are, what your training is, and how you feel like you are going to feel out these situations. This is the start of a police officer's day.
For 18 years I was a Los Angeles police officer, and I served on the front lines in a police car for 17 of those 18 years. So, as they say, I was out pushing the sled around for 12 hours a day, snooping and pooping, looking for bad guys, and protecting and serving. On the side of my car, that is exactly what it said, ``to protect and to serve.'' That is what a police officer does.
It is not like the shows that you see on TV. Some of it is boring time, some of it is high adrenalin, but all of it is service to the community. Every second, every minute of your shift is service to the community.
So if we are out there enforcing the law, making a traffic stop, making an arrest, or just, as 1-Adam-12 used to do, go and respond to a ``see the man,'' ``see the woman,'' and help and just serve, that is a day-to-day.
I didn't know Deputy Goforth, but I feel like he was a brother in arms because he was. He was someone who went out and served his community, served them with honor, served them with integrity. And I am sure that the community is better for his years of service.
I am sure over the next decade or generations that they won't forget Deputy Goforth's commitment to the community. There will be a memorial. There will be a yearly service. People will talk about what he meant to the community.
I was in the 990 class in LAPD. The very first female officer who died in the line of duty for LAPD was in the 590 class. Our class was taken out of its normal duty of going and learning how to be a professional law enforcement officer, and we went to the service for that officer.
Tina Kerbrat was the very first female officer who died in LAPD, and it was very similar to Deputy Goforth. It was basically a shooting, an assassination.
This will always stay with you when you go to a law enforcement officer's funeral. You will never forget it. You will see the thousands of people.
Just like many of the Members said today, the thousands of people that came from other departments all over the country, all over the world, come to pay their respects to the law enforcement professional who did everything that they could to protect their community.
My squadron leader in my academy class died in Afghanistan. He was a law enforcement officer with LAPD who was a SWAT officer. He did his duty, went to Afghanistan to fight for our ideals and for our morals with the United States Marine Corps. He died in Afghanistan doing the same thing that he would do on a 24-hour-a-day basis, protecting what we believe here in America.
I am honored to be able to stand and talk about our heroes on the street, talk about the people who protect our community on a day-to-day basis, put their lives on the line so that we can live the life that we choose.
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