Cops
Mar 5, 2014, 12:00 PM | Updated: 2:51 pm
When your kids go to bed at night, do they ever say, “and God bless policemen?”
I’ll bet John Hobbs’ kids did when they were growing up.
I’ll bet they said, “God bless daddy, keep him safe.”
That’s what cops’ kids do. And cops’ wives and husbands do the same when their spouses go to work every day, and hopefully come back home.
Detective John Hobbs had spent 21 years protecting me, as a member of the Phoenix Police Department, and I never got to shake his hand or to thank him before he was shot to death Monday attempting to apprehend a fugitive.
He was successful stopping the criminal, but he died doing it. His partner is still hospitalized.
Don’t you wonder sometimes why they do it? Why do people become cops? It’s certainly not glamorous like on TV. It’s boring and it’s dangerous and it’s underappreciated.
Everybody loves firefighters because they don’t give people tickets. But cops, all too often, are a civic necessity to quietly keep the bad guys away.
Today we have one less bad guy. But we had to lose a good guy to do it. Somebody explain to the Hobbs kids how that works.
I’m Pat McMahon.
