Honor police all the time

Friday, July 22, 2011

It’s no surprise that a Bedford police officer rescued a 94-year-old man from his burning home, but we’re glad that the Town Council acknowledged his courage and his clear-headed response to an emergency, presenting Sgt. Scott Plumer with a proclamation for his “life-saving efforts.”

He deserved the honor and the council should be commended for realizing that.

But we are certain that if Sgt. Plumer had his druthers, he’d rather that people honored, or more to the point respected, all police officers every day. What he did was extraordinary, but we, and we believe Sgt. Plumer, believe that police officers, all of them, are prepared to do something like that every day that they put on the uniform.

We all, however, seem to forget that.

For every honor we give to an individual police officer, we seem to dishonor more of them just for doing their jobs. We all hate it when we’re pulled over for speeding or for a busted tail light. We seldom blame ourselves; we blame the police officer who, we love to contend, should have had something better to do.

“Why aren’t you out catching real criminals?” we often whine.

Well, for one thing, we are fortunate that there aren’t that many real criminals in Bedford, and doubly fortunate that police here seem to be able to catch quite a few of them.

But the primary job of a police officer, we are certain Sgt. Plumer will tell you, is to keep us safe and one way to keep us safe is to ensure that when we’re on the road, we are operating at maximum safety. That means all of our tail lights should be working, as should our head lights, and it certainly means we shouldn’t be speeding.

It might come as a shock to some of us that police officers generally don’t enjoy pulling us over. Fewer of us, we hope, will be shocked to learn that when they do pull us over, it’s for a good reason, not just because they’re bored or don’t like the color of our cars. They pull us over because they have jobs to do and, for the most part, they do them well.

But we only seem to pay homage to police officers when something extraordinary happens, like Sgt. Plumer’s dash into a burning building. He certainly deserves that homage, but we really should try to show officers respect every day in any way we can.

Police officers aren’t paid a great deal of money. Often they can’t afford to live in the towns they serve and protect, and, in some cases, this is true of Bedford. But they serve and protect us anyway, out of a sense of duty.

Every day there’s an officer like Sgt. Plumer out there ready to do what he did and to do it for you.

Please, the next time you’re pulled over, take it with equanimity and remember that the man or woman behind those flashing lights is there, first and foremost, for you.

In the extreme, he or she will try like heck to save your neck.