Back Up

It's snowy and slick this morning. It's dark, and early. Police Spouses and Partners are at Roll Calls serving food to those officers at my department lucky enough to work Thanksgiving. They were present in force with Halloween treats. They have put together thank you lunches.

Not everyone is cut out to be the significant other for a police officer. The pay has gotten better over the years, but the hours still suck. The time away from family on holidays is particularly difficult.

The partner, and the kids, know "the look" when their cop comes through the front door. Something happened at work, and the officer was in the middle of it. They saw, or did, something that would deeply trouble citizens unused to the horrors human beings perpetrate on each other. Yet, the cop got through it, somehow, and made it back home again.

Police families are a special group. One of my daughters has befriended a cop wife, whose husband works in the quiet tidewater community of Baltimore. The friend was wondering what effect the tumult of having a husband in law enforcement would visit on her children. My daughter reassured her that cop's kids learn how to handle the situation. "Thanksgiving started when dad got up. Turkey tastes the same Friday as it did on Thursday."

This has been a particularly humbling year for law enforcement. Behind the thin blue line continues to be the spouses, the partners... The men and women who understand us, and understand what they have signed up for. And love us anyway.

Thank you, Pat.

Thank you, spouses and partners. We can do what we do because we can come home to you.