EDITORIALS Why we mourn police officers

When Abbotsford police Const. John Davidson was shot and killed on Monday, the community responded immediately in shared grief. Residents and fellow officers gathered outside the police station in a spontaneous vigil. They praised Davidson as a hero and recalled his work with children and the community.

“We just want to express our heartfelt sorrow to the family. We all have heavy hearts but they are carrying a much bigger burden than we are,” Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said.

“All we can do as a community is surround them and just let them know they are loved and that we empathize with them and that they will be in our thoughts and our prayers.”

Greater Victoria residents will recall the similar outpouring of grief over the death of RCMP Const. Sarah Beckett in Langford.

Why do we mourn the deaths of police officers in such a communal way that doesn’t happen for others? A commuter who dies in a road crash is no less important to her family and friends. A construction worker killed on the job leaves lives as shattered.

The difference, of course, is that we recognize police officers risk their lives to protect the rest of us. They put on the uniform to provide us with the security to live our lives without the constant fear that rode on the shoulders of humans through most of our history.

Davidson and his colleagues responded to a report of a man who had allegedly stolen a car and then had opened fire on the dealership employees who tried to stop him from getting away.

The officers walked into a situation that was unquestionably life-threatening, but for them, turning aside and letting someone else handle it was not an option. If they didn’t stop the gunman, no one else would.

The word “hero” is bandied about too freely these days. Courage and fortitude are praiseworthy, but they are not necessarily heroic.

A hero is someone who chooses to risk his own life to save others. It’s the choice that makes the hero. Police officers make that choice when they take the oath, and they make it again almost every day. Davidson certainly made that choice when he went up against the gunman.

There is perhaps another element that is rarely present for others who put their lives at risk. Someone who kills a police officer tears the web of laws we weave to turn a collection of individuals into a community.

The killer was almost always doing or planning to do something that violated the contract we all make with each other to preserve that community. It is so serious a breach that the killing of a police officer is automatically treated as first-degree murder.

In that sense, the killing of an officer reminds us of how thin is the fence that keeps us from anarchy.

Police officers sign up to defend that fence, at great risk to themselves and their families.

One police officer’s wife observed that she never worried about him when he was a member of the Emergency Response Team. The ERT members always knew what they were going into and were as well-prepared for a dangerous situation as it was possible to be. She had faith that he was coming home at the end of the day.

She did worry during the years when he was a patrol officer. She never knew when he would walk into a domestic dispute or a seemingly ordinary situation that could explode into violence.

Those are the risks that police officers and their families live with every day. If we grieve more publicly for Const. John Davidson than for others, perhaps that is why.