Amarillo Police Department, Texas
End of Watch Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Add to My HeroesRaquel Virginia Saunders
Sergeant Raquel Saunders died from complications as the result of contracting COVID-19 while in the line of duty.
Sergeant Saunders had served with the Amarillo Police Department for 23 years and had previously served with the Potter County Sheriff's Office for four years. She is survived by four children.
The Effects of COVID on Law Enforcement
Beginning in early 2020, thousands of law enforcement officers and other first responders throughout the country began to contract COVID-19 during the worldwide pandemic. Due to the nature of their job, law enforcement officers were required to work and interact with the community even as the majority of the country was self-quarantined. As a result, hundreds of officers died from COVID-related illnesses and other complications.
Corrections agencies, in particular, suffered tremendous losses due to the constant and close proximity between the corrections officers and large inmate populations. Since March 2020, ODMP has verified that over 600 law enforcement officers have died as the result of a confirmed or presumed exposure while on duty and continues to work with hundreds of other agencies that have suffered a COVID-related death.
Visit ODMP's COVID-19 memorial listing every officer who has died as a result of a confirmed or presumed exposure.
Bio
- Age 50
- Tour 27 years
- Badge 96
Incident Details
- Cause COVID19
- Incident Date Thursday, September 9, 2021
Most Recent Reflection
View all 36 ReflectionsToday, I will not answer the radio call that your 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 murderer or a car thief.
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 a car or the child you were too busy to watch who went outside and fell into the swimming pool, but that I revived.
No, today I will not do that.
Why?
Today, I was suspended from duty for doing my job, because the media, liberals, a community organizer, a lawyer who formally represented terrorists and is the US attorney general and a mayor who ran on an anti-police agenda, who are all advised by a drug dealer, liar and income tax cheat. AND, all who know nothing about Policing, have vilified my profession.
Because ----
Today, I was killed by a drunk driver while I was helping push a disabled car off the highway.
Today, I was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop to simply tell someone that they had a taillight out.
Today, I was killed in a traffic accident rushing to help a citizen.
Today, I was shot and killed serving a warrant on a known drug dealer.
Today, I was killed by a man when I came by to do a welfare check because his family was too 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 an officer will go to a house and tell a mom and dad or a wife or husband or a child that their son or daughter or husband or wife or father or mother won't be coming home today.
The flags at many police stations were flown at half-mast today 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 and bagpipes 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 mourn.
There will be no cries for justice.
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
It has been a year today since you paid the ultimate sacrifice doing what you love and the selflessness that you showed your community.
My thoughts and prayers go out to your family and your brothers and sisters in blue as another great officer was taken from us to soon. You will never be forgotten!
Rest Easy Brothers and Sisters as we will take it from here.
Misty Lang
Great Great Niece of Fallen Officer William Hiram Givens McDonald County Sheriff's Department, McDonald County Missouri EOW 02-04-1984
January 30, 2022
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