The thin blue line deals in a shade of gray
Training. Cops talk about it all the time. Sometimes I think they’re trained only to talk about training. Busting through a door. Asking for a driver’s license. Approaching a suspect. Dealing with a snotty member of the public who’s armed with a complaint. Name the topic, and police officers inevitably will fall back on what they’ve learned at the police academy, or through hard-earned experience, and occasionally, via trial and error.
Always, always, always rely on training.
Which begs the question: In a business that depends upon — and maybe values — the suppression of emotion in favor of procedure, how do you deal with the most emotional moment of a career?
It’s been one year and three days since Santa Fe Police Department Officer Robert Duran died in the line of duty, and the department’s brass and rank and file continue to grapple with the hardest day they’ve ever faced on the job. It’s the ultimate quandary in a business that still depends on the stiff upper lip.
“You go through law enforcement training and we, all of us in here, have over, well over 15 years going toward 20 years [in police work],” says Deputy Chief Matthew Champlin, nodding at Chief Paul Joye to his left and Deputy Chief Ben Valdez across a wide conference table. “You learn, or you’re trained, how to disassociate yourself from emotion and feeling, to deal with law. And our function is law. We don’t apply criminal charges or investigative tactics based on emotions. We make sure that we’re separated from that.
“And if there’s anything that I truly remember from this particular day, it was a reminder of the human part of law enforcement.”
March 2, 2022: Duran, responding to an emergency call about a woman claiming she was being kidnapped, pursues a vehicle on Interstate 25 on the outskirts of town. The woman, Jeannine Jaramillo, later is suspected of fabricating the call and leading police on a highspeed, wrong-way chase. A crash ensues, and Duran and retired Las Vegas, N.M., firefighter Frank Lovato — driving on the freeway in a pickup — perish.
The fallout of the disaster remains fresh in the chief’s briefing room at SFPD. Champlin, Valdez and Joye are seated around a table, the same one they were at when they first heard the news a year ago. It’s too dramatic to call it an eerie scene, but it’s a dark, depressing day outside and the mood seems to permeate the window.
There’s little question Joye, Valdez and Champlin don’t have to dig to recall the feelings, the memories, the pain.
“I remember everything about that day,” Joye says. “Unfortunately … [I] remember how we were notified and everything for the rest of the day.”
The details are difficult: the awful crash scene, the ensuing investigation, and later, the emotional funeral in Rio Rancho, where Duran and his family lived.
“I remember showing up on scene and everybody being devastated, not even able to hold it together,” says Champlin. “And seeing officers in that way, it was a stark reminder that we’re human. You know, we were told in the beginning when we go to the [Law Enforcement] Academy, that we could be called upon to make this … to make an ultimate sacrifice. You may have to put your life on the line between you and somebody — you may have no idea who they are, and you may be killed. And your family has to be willing to accept that as well.”
Juxtapose that to the training most cops receive: Stick to the facts; limit the emotion; stay focused on the job at hand. All well and good until life — and death — intrude.
In the days since 3-2-22, Joye, Champlin and Valdez say the department has worked hard to make certain Duran, 43 at the time of his death, is not forgotten. Another briefing room at police headquarters on Camino Entrada is laced with memorials to the fallen officer, tributes to his work and sacrifice. As Valdez guides me around the artifacts, it’s hard not to be struck by the sadness: A man went to work one morning, and didn’t come home to his wife and teenage sons.
The emotion was on the front burner last week: On
Thursday, the department and others in the law enforcement community took part in a 2.86-mile walk/run on the south side near the city’s de facto cop complex — SFPD headquarters and the nearby Law Enforcement Academy — to remember Duran and all he meant to friends and colleagues.
The numbers have symmetry and a message: Duran’s badge number was 286.
“This isn’t something necessarily that you … you don’t move on from something like this,” Joye says, trying to sum up where his department has landed in the past year. “You don’t move past something like this. You just have to move forward, taking the hurt and the emotions, and carry it with you. And people still talk about Robert, people still miss Robert. He affected all of us. “Yeah. And it will hurt forever, but that’s OK.”
Joye didn’t say it, but I think I know what he meant. It’s OK, because it means the cops are human, too.