Officers memorialized during annual rememberance

In an annual show of reverence and remembrance, Southeast Texans gathered with Beaumont police officers May 19 at the Beaumont Police Department (BPD) to honor officers who sacrificed their lives while working to create a safer community.

“Law enforcement has been in my life for over 40 years,” said keynote speaker Brit Featherston, who is acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and a Port Arthur native. “I am proud to have been a police officer.”

Featherston recalled the 450-plus nationwide law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2021, saying, “Of that number, 319 succumbed to COVID-19. This shows you what we already knew; dangers to officers come in many forms. From bullets to car wrecks, from mental illness to the smallest of organisms – a virus – caught by simply doing your job.”

“We all recognize the obvious value of the police officer to provide order in our community, but the more encompassing value takes more consideration.”

Reciting a portion of a speech given at the Sorbonne in Paris by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a police officer, Featherston relayed, “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Roosevelt recognized that there were second-guessers and backseat drivers – those critics who have never done the job who want to tell you how you can do it better,” Featherston said. “Roosevelt recognized that professions like law enforcement require split-second decisions and quick reactions, all the while requiring just enough action and not too little or too much. What Roosevelt was saying is that credit goes to the cop.”

Along with their EMS and firefighting counterparts, Featherston said police are among the few professionals who rush into danger to help others and, if need be, make the ultimate sacrifice in that effort.

“Roosevelt was also saying that those who sacrifice toward a devotion, a calling greater than themselves, these public servants know that they can’t always stop the crime, catch the thief or prevent the child from being harmed,” he said. “Yet, the servant is not timid. He still runs to the fight, not away. Denying all natural instincts, she seeks out chaos to secure the safety of others, so our community is a better place to live.”