Thanks to all the officers serving in the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government - Division of Police

I have a couple of friends who are police officers here in Lexington, Kentucky. I’ve heard a few stories and I’ve seen enough news coverage to know that I really appreciate the job that these men and women do for us. I am sure I don’t know very much at all about what they do when I really think about it. I don’t know many of them personally, so for today, I ran four miles to honor all of those that serve in the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government - Division of Police.For starters, these men and women show up for work everyday not knowing what the day will bring. Most days they probably have the typical issues to deal with like car accidents or traffic violations, but they never know when they will get the call to respond to a violent situation. They have to be ready. Their families have to be ready. I’m not sure I could deal with the stress of letting my husband or children go out the door on a daily basis knowing that someone with a gun just might lose it and they would have to respond to the situation. I’m pretty sure that these officers deal with plenty of stress. I’m also pretty sure that they get a lot of complaints and deal with a lot of unhappy people. Most of us are angry when they stop us because we are speeding. We accuse them of filling their quotas or trying to make our insurance rates go up. We don’t think about the fact that our speeding could be dangerous and these officers are trying to prevent us from causing an accident. I know I have a lead foot. When I finally get pulled over, I am just going to be thankful that it hasn’t happened more often, that I haven’t caused a wreck, and remind myself that the officer is actually trying to help me out.

Another side of the coin is the fact that our police officers have to do all sorts of mundane tasks such as directing traffic. When the lights go out, the police have to stand in the intersection and keep us from running into each other. Do you honestly think that these people wanted to be police officers so they could direct traffic? Maybe a couple of them aspired to do that for a living, but my guess is that most of them have other jobs in mind when they join the force. My police buddy says that most people blow past him and he is lucky he isn’t run down. I’ve heard that some people actually spit on our police officers! I hope I never see anyone do that. Why are we in such a hurry and why are we so ungrateful? If I wouldn’t cause a traffic jam, I’d stop my car, roll down my window and thank the officer for keeping us from ourselves. No matter what these officers are doing, whether it is mundane or dangerous, we owe them our thanks. There is a lot going on out there that we will never know about because our police officers are always on the job keeping situations from escalating into something big, bad, and ugly. Thank you to all our officers. If I knew you by name, I’d thank each and every one of you!