Tuscaloosa City Hall Shines Blue for National Police Week
The City of Tuscaloosa announced in tweet Monday afternoon that City Hall will be lit blue the remainder of the week in honor of National Police Week.
As the tweet mentions, the lighting will honor officers who lost their lives. This millennia, the city of Tuscaloosa has lost three police officer's in the line of duty: Patrolman Harold Loyd Thorne, Jr. in April 2005, Police Officer Trevor Scott Phillips in May 2011, and, most recently, Investigator Dornell Cousette in September 2019.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, last year, 146 police officers died in the line of duty. Seven of those were in Alabama. So far this year. 72 have died while serving.
The National Police Week was created by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. He dubbed May 15 Peace Officers Memorial Day and proclaimed the week in which that day fell National Police Week.
In any given year, tens of thousands of police officers from across the United States attend a variety of events in Washington D.C. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lead sponsors National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) and Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) have determined the 39th annual affair of events will not take place.
"I am saddened that we cannot come together this year to grieve with our survivor families and draw strength from one another on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, but given the national crisis we must, as we always have, put the safety of the public first," the NLEOMF said in a March release.