Officers lived up to vow to protect and serve
In an age of mass shootings, international terrorism and an ever-growing civilian arsenal of high-powered weapons, being a law enforcement officer requires more courage and selflessness than ever.
The world learned that on Oct. 1 in Las Vegas.
The shooting revealed a key change in police tactics. Gone are the days when patrol officers would establish a perimeter and call in the tactical teams. Now, every officer is expected to team up in small groups and use whatever weapons are at their disposal to respond to active shooters.
When the four officers who did just that on Oct. 1 made their way through Mandalay Bay, they had no idea how many people were firing or whether those people had booby-trapped the resort, yet they went anyway. In putting themselves in harm’s way to protect others, they exemplified the best in their profession and the best of our community.
There were people like Officer Casey Clarkson, a gang unit member who was working overtime at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when the shooting started. Thanks to his efforts, which included draping his body over a concertgoer and protected her, a number of concertgoers lived.
“Please share and help us find him so that we can all hug him and let him know that because (of) him 7 little kids are waking up to their mommies this morning,” one concertgoer posted on Facebook about Clarkson, who suffered a gunshot wound to the neck but kept working.
There were too many law enforcement heroes to name here. Sheriff Joe Lombardo said “there’s a thousand heroes out there,” and while it wasn’t clear if he was just talking about law enforcement officers, we’re willing to say he was.
Metro officers fanned out across the city, helping the wounded get hospital care, assisting in locking down resorts up and down the Strip amid reports of multiple active shooters, and doing whatever else was needed to keep people safe.
And they did it all while dealing with the emotional pain of losing one of their own: Charleston Hartfield, the 34-year-old Metro officer who was killed while attending the event.
Hartfield, a youth football coach and former Nevada National Guard member, was described by Brig. Gen. Zachary Dozier as someone who “epitomizes everything good about being an American, a soldier, a police officer and a father. His loss is devastating.”
At a time of high risk and, justifiably, an increasingly greater level of accountability via cellphone cameras and body cameras, being a police officer takes a remarkable sense of duty and protectiveness.
It takes somebody like Metro Officer Brady Cook, who, on just his second night on the job, was assigned to work the festival.
He was hit by a bullet that traveled through his shoulder, bicep and chest before exiting his back — a serious wound. In less than two weeks, he asked Lombardo if he could come back to work.
The Metro team was extraordinary.
Officers reached the 32nd floor suite quickly, led concert goers to safety, kept traffic flowing to hospitals and did an untold number of other things that kept people alive.
Thankful? We can’t even begin to say how much, knowing our community is being served by law enforcement officers who proved the strength of their character under crushing duress.