PAX Centurion - November / December 2014

Page 16 • PAX CENTURION • November/December 2014 617-989-BPPA (2772) Stop by our store located at 53 Plain Street (rear) in Braintree or call us at (781) 843-5293. When your business or personal needs require custom embroidery or screen printing,we hope you choose The Embroidery Clinic for high quality and competitive pricing. W hen a Boston cop named WayneAnderson was shot to death by a young driver he had stopped for going the wrong way on a one-way street in Dorchester, more than 4,000 fellow officers, including his partner, Bobby Luongo, jammed Warren Street in Roxbury for the funeral at Charles Street A.M.E. Church. “It was a different kind of funeral than most of us were used to,” Luongo later recalled. “People kept shouting, ‘Amen!’ But then the minister starts talking about howWayne had acted professionally, and said, ‘If Wayne had shot first and killed this kid, everyone would be screaming about police brutality.’Now the whole front row of cops is going, ‘Amen!’Me, too.” It’s a humorous story, rooted in an uncomfortable truth. Why must it require the death of a cop for the public to appreciate the perilous nature of what they do? Indeed, why should the benefit of the doubt go to the hooligan? Over at Ladder 9 in Charlestown there’s a veteran Boston firefight- er named Damon Mercer who grew up on Mission Hill. “I used to hear of Officer Friendly,” Mercer said, “but in my mind Officer Friendly was always a firefighter. People would get mad at the police, especially when they came to lock up someone, but firefight- ers never made anyone mad.” Cops can’t win… unless they’re killed By Joe Fitzgerald, Boston Herald In a town where the names of athletes and pols easily come to mind, how many of the following names do you remember? These were all Boston cops who received our grateful praise, but only after they were shot to death in the line of duty. Roy Sergei survived a bullet striking his helmet as a Marine inVietnam, only to be ambushed in a Back Bay alley, responding to a woman’s screams. Sherman Griffiths was killed by a shotgun blast, trying to break through the barricaded door of a Dorchester drug den. John Mulligan was assassinated during an over- night detail onAmerican Legion Highway. Richie Halloran was killed while investigating a B&E in East Boston. How about the Schroeder brothers? Walter was gunned down at a bank robbery in Brighton; three years later his brother John was shot to death by robbers he had surprised at a pawn shop in Roxbury. Was that pastor right? If any of these fallen law- men had shot first and killed the bad guys, would there have been demands for them to turn in their weapons and badges? We know the answer, don’t we? And it begs a troubling question: Why does a cop have to die to be the good guy? (Reprinted from the Boston Herald, November 26, 2014.)