Honoring Fallen Police Officers

Floor Speech

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Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, peace officers are really the last strand of wire in defense between the fox and the chickens. They are the ones that stand between the lawful and the lawless. They protect us from outlaws. Sometimes, they do so without much appreciation from the public.

Friday, about 11,000 people or more gathered for the funeral of Deputy Darren Goforth at the Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Many hundreds of others couldn't get in to any of the service. It was televised live on all four networks. Helicopters flew over during the service. It was hot, and people stood and gave appreciation to this man.

He was married to Kathleen. They had two children, Ava and Ryan. Ava is 5, and Ryan is 12. He had been a Harris County deputy sheriff for 10 years. I guess every member of the sheriff's department was at that funeral.

There were police officers from all over the United States there. There were some from Canada and the United Kingdom. I talked to a police officer from Connecticut who was in Houston for this funeral. He was stunned in a way of appreciation for the people and other peace officers that came for this man's funeral.

It affected the whole community and still does to a great degree for a lot of reasons. In my other life, I was a prosecutor and a judge at the criminal courts building in Houston. I prosecuted people who killed peace officers, and I tried cases where peace officers had been killed when I was a judge. It is a grim thing that happens when a peace officer is murdered in the line of duty.

As my colleague, Mr. Culberson, pointed out, Darren Goforth was getting gasoline at a local gas station he stopped at regularly and was filling up his patrol car 2 weeks ago. An assassin came up from behind him and shot him in the back of the head.

He kept shooting. He finally emptied his clip, and 15 times, Deputy Goforth was shot in the back of the head. The assassin fled but was later captured, and a man is charged with capital murder.

There seems to be an environment in America that police officers are being targeted. We will leave that for a different discussion. These are real people. They do what most of us would never do. They go out and protect and serve us. Police officers have been referred to as the thin blue line.

As mentioned earlier, blue is a traditional color that peace officers wear. They also wear a badge or a star, a star in Texas for deputy sheriffs and Texas Rangers, a badge for local police officers. They place that over their heart, symbolic of the shield that protects us from the lawless.

They do that all over the country. That is why the badge or the star is placed in that location. The badge, the star, it really represents everything that is good and right about law and order and America.

When a person, a peace officer is murdered, it affects all of us. It was encouraging to me and I think other peace officers to see the community support for Darren Goforth; his wife, Kathleen; Ava; and Ryan.

A lot of stories were told about this wonderful person. Being a police officer was his second career. He loved working on cars. He wanted to make them run, old cars--muscle cars, as we called them in my day.

He had recently bought his son, Ryan, a Captain America T-shirt, and he bought himself one. They didn't have time to wear it, but at the funeral, Ryan, his son, under his suit, wore his Captain America T-shirt. Deputy Goforth was buried in his, underneath his uniform. He was a marvelous individual, a brave and good guy.

The community not only attended the funeral and watched it on TV. As the processional left the church, led by I don't know how many police officers on motorcycles and then you had the Patriot Guard motorcycle riders and other motorcycle groups at the end of the parade going through the Houston area to the cemetery, people stood on the side of the road, put their hand over their heart.

A lot of money has been raised for Darren Goforth's family. At the location where he was murdered, a Chevron station, people are still putting up flowers and tributes.

As my colleague said, apparently, on more than one occasion, peace officers have been filling up their patrol cars--and in Houston, patrol officers, Houston officers and county officers, travel alone; there is not two in a car--but while they have been filling up their patrol cars, apparently, on more than one occasion, some citizen has stopped, come up to the officer, and said, ``I got your back,'' and that was really the message.

In our area, in the Houston area, we are saddened by what happened to this individual, but I think it is true that the community, like that Connecticut officer said, like no other place, is very supportive of peace officers, their families, and what they do and that we do have their back. The community supports them.

We mourn with the family; we mourn with all peace officers who have lost a brother peace officer, but we are also resolved and resilient that, in the future, we are going to have their back because respecting and upholding the rule of law is what these men and women do, and we should support them in that effort.

And that is just the way it is.

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