We take them for granted daily, and when a dog is rescued from a storm drain, when a street thug is captured, or when a tense hostage situation is diffused, we sigh and say, “That’s nice.”
But members of the Chattanooga Police Department, as well as the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies, are on the front lines daily, putting their health and their lives on the lines to protect the safety of others.
On Thursday, Chattanooga police honored 75 officers and civilians for actions above and beyond the call of duty. Our minds go immediately to their efforts on July 16, 2016, when they ended the attack on the U.S. Navy Operational Support Center on Amnicola Highway by taking down the assassin of five service members.
Nine officers received life-saving awards for helping pull Officer Dennis Pedigo out of the line of fire on that day, and another eight were honored for helping U.S. Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith, who later died from his wounds, escape further fire.
But the day-to-day heroics – pulling a man from a fire, talking a woman down from the edge of a bridge and pulling a child away from an armed man – are often taken for granted. And that doesn’t even consider the likes of standing on a busy street to direct traffic after an accident, stepping into the middle of a domestic dispute or chasing a thief in the dark.
In an era when a few bad actors among thousands of police and sheriff’s departments and highway patrols can cause an entire profession to have a bad name, it seems more than appropriate to honor those who protect and serve daily without thanks, without corporate CEO pay, without seeing enough of their families and without the respect they deserve.