Police Officer Patricio Enrique Zamarripa

Today, I will not answer the radio call that you boyfriend has come home drunk and is beating you again. Today I will not answer the radio call that your 16 year old daughter, who is very responsible, is four hours late coming home from school. Today I will not answer the radio call that your store has been robbed or your house has been burglarized. Today I will not stop a drunk driver from killing someone. I will not catch a rapist or a murder or a car theft. Today I will not answer the radio call that a man has a gun or tried to abduct a child or that someone has been stabbed or has been in a terrible accident. Today I will not save your child that you locked in the car or the child you were to busy to watch who went outside and fell into swimming pool. No, today I will not do that. Why? Because Today I was killed be a drunk driver while I was helping push a disabled car off the highway. Today I was was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop to simply tell someone that they has taillight out. Today I was killed in traffic accident rushing to help a citizen. Today I was shot and killed serving a warrant on a know drug dealer. Today I was killed be a man when I came by to do a welfare check because his family was to busy. Today I was killed trying to stop a bank robbery or a grocery store robbery. Today I was killed doing my job.

A chaplain and a officer will go to a house and tell a mom and dad or a wife or husband or mother or father I won’t be coming home today. The flags at many police stations were flown at half-mast but most people won’t know why. There will be a funeral and my fellow officers will come, a twenty-one-gun salute will be given, and taps will be played as I am laid to rest my name will be put on a plaque , on a wall , in a building, in a city somewhere. A folded flag will be placed on a mantel or a bookcase in a home somewhere and a family will morn.

There will be no cries for justices. There will be no riots in the streets. There will be no officers marching , screaming “no justice, no peace.” No citizens will scream that something must be done. No windows will be smashed, no cars burned , no stones thrown,no names called. Only someone crying themselves to sleep tonight will be the only sign that I was cared about.
I was a police officer

Back the Blue, Kate

November 23, 2019