What began as a desire to give back, became a reality …….

What began as a desire to give back, became a reality ……

It began with a phone call no Law Enforcement Family wants to receive, “It is with great sadness that we inform you that your loved one has been killed while on duty.” The words and circumstances may be different but the loss, the grief, the emptiness is the same. 

From that moment life became a blur and I functioned mechanically not really focusing on what was going on around me. So many thoughts and emotions, how was I ever going to go on? Would I ever feel like living again? How will I deal with the emptiness? Even if you don’t want to think about it, you worry about finances, how are we going to pay bills. 

From the moment we received the notification; calls, messages, visits and mail began to come in from all over the country. All of these were from persons we did not even know but all had a common thread, the “Thin Blue Line”. Support was from Law Enforcement Families, Officers, and Supporters of Law Enforcement all sending love, support, and prayers. All of this support definitely helped us through some awful times and provided some comfort and peace. 

One evening weeks after Floyd’s memorial as I sat at home with family writing thank you notes, I shared with them that I wanted to give some of that love and support back to others who found themselves in our situation. My family supported my idea 100 percent and even offered to help. They too wanted to do something to honor Floyd and help others, so we began to research needs of Law Enforcement Officers and their families. 

We found so much data and information that we had to decide on what we could realistically do. When an officer dies in the line of duty families experience a loss of income immediately. Pay due and insurances are not quickly paid and can even take months depending on the type of death. So, one of our goals was to help a surviving family with immediate one-time financial assistance. 

The other area we felt passionate about was helping the Law Enforcement surviving coworker. Law Enforcement Officers experience a tremendous amount of stress in their jobs already and when they lose a coworker friend additional stress is added. Many do not access departmental resources for fear of being labeled so we all agreed that we wanted to help them by providing supportive events to help cope with the loss and stress associated with their jobs. 

And we want to do all this by engaging our local law enforcement groups and our community so we can work together and bring about change in perceptions of Law Enforcement here at home and across the country.