Thread: Police Remembrance Day - 29 September

[ame="http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=87bSxTIZJtk"]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87bSxTIZJtk[/ame]

Yep - poor buggers. Thanks one and all.

Its a pretty big deal for us at work and something that Im coming to understand more and more.

Bill Crews, who was tragically shot by a fellow officer in a shoot out with armed drug dealers will be the first NSW police officer to have been killed in the line of duty since 2006.

its a solomn reminder that things can turn to **** in a split second. The 2 officers that were killed at Crescent Head in the 90's thought they were going to a domestic violence incident, something we do every shift, only this time there was a gun man hiding in bushes nearby. One of the Inspectors at work was in the Tactics Unit that responded to the incident and on a training day a few weeks back we had a Sgt come in from sydney to run a course with us and they spent an hour re living this day in the course (we got a little off topic) and to say it chilled me to the spine would be an understatement.

Matt

Today, tragically, another two names are added to the wall of remembrance...
another fwo families shattered, untold lives affected and changed forever.

http://www.npm.org.au/Honour-Roll/stiller
http://www.npm.org.au/Honour-Roll/leeding

LEST WE FORGET


In SA our first Police service deaths occurred here, in the riverland, near WAIKERIE on 7/5/1847, two officers died in the incident, 24 year old Lance Corporal William WICKAM and 22year old Mounted Constable John CARTER.

One of them was able to swim but the other was not and therefore clung for support to his comrade and thus both perished clasped in each other’s arms.
James Allen Jnr ’ 1853

Wickham and Carter drowned after tumbling out of a bark canoe in which they had tried to cross the River Murray at Wigley Reach.

The officers had received orders to travel to Overland Corner where they were to deal with reported disturbances. Hostilities had arisen between Aborigines and whites over drovers moving sheep and cattle through the area from NSW.

Wickham and Carter set out from Moorundie on horseback and dressed in full uniform ’ heavy tunics trousers riding boots sabres and firearms ’ rode through mallee scrub. Some way into their journey on May 7 they decided to stay overnight at the river-front station of JH Wigley.

Despite the clear risk that their canoe would sink or capsize the officers attempted to cross the river. JH Wigley heard ’a shriek and (a) splash’ and rushed out to investigate. He found nothing: the two young officers had drowned.

Local Aborigines later recovered the men’s bodies which they laid to rest on the river bank.

Later accounts of the tragedy varied. James Allen Jnr suggested the weight of the officers’ accoutrements and heavy military boots had overburdened the poorly built canoe. But witnesses said that Carter ’ who stood propelling the boat as Wickham sat in the stern ’ caused it to capsize by leaning slightly forward.

Wickham and Carter members of a then only nine-year-old police force with just 65 men had operated from a post at Moorundie just downstream from Blanchetown.

Alexander Tolmer a high-profile inspector and later commissioner wrote of his brother-in-law Carter in his memoirs. ’John’ he recorded ’was one of the finest and most intellectual young men in the force.’

The tragic drowning reported in Adelaide newspapers The Register and The South Australian devastated Wickham and Carter’s colleagues.

They sent and paid for a detachment to collect their mates’ bodies and return them to Adelaide for a funeral in the West Terrace Cemetery. On July 16 The South Australian reported on the many ’sorrowing relations comrades and friends’ who had paid their last respects at an emotional service.

The Police Association and the City Watch House Recreation Fund paid to restore the officers’ gravesite in 1947.

On Police Foundation Day in 1997 SAPOL unveiled a cairn and commemorative plaque at Banrock Station ’ three kilometres from the accident scene ’ to honour the officers and mark the 150th anniversary of their deaths.

Riverland police had pushed for and built the structure out of stones from an old Thurk Station (now Banrock Station) chimney. This is now the site that every Police Remembrance Day there is a service (well attended) to remember all the fallen.

It is a beautiful location.

Tribute to Australian police officers - YouTube


(I know of 3 others whos deaths this year could be directly linked to their employment and experiences as Police Officers, as the above video highlights
spare a thought for them and their loved ones...)



http://www.npm.org.au/




They always knew they could be
They never thought they would be
God knows none ever should be
Killed in the line of duty

Some made their final stand
Their profession’s last demand
Some fell with gun in hand
Killed in the line duty

A routine to many a cop
Some made one final stop
Someone’s Mom or Pop
Killed in the line of duty

Others answered one last call
To a robbery, theft, or brawl
They arrived only to fall
Killed in the line of duty

Some were dressed in brown, some blue
Some in gray, and plain clothes too
Some were dressed like me and you
Killed in the line of duty

May their souls be forever blessed
For they who are now at rest
Died doing what they loved best
Killed in the line of duty

Forgotten they never could be
Forgotten they never should be
Thought they never would be
Killed in the line of duty

God bless all those who fell
They are missed and loved so well
Let us pray and toll the bell
Those killed in the line of duty

(Dan MARCOU)