A hearse carrying Officer Lloyd Reed Jr. moves along Napoleon Street on Dec. 4, 2015, in Johnstown. Reed was shot to death while responding to a domestic violence call. (Tribune-Review file)
Story by JONATHAN D. SILVER
Photographs by KRISTINA SERAFINI
Tribune-Review
April 16, 2023
Each year, roughly 150 law enforcement officers across the country die in the line of duty.
They lose their lives in any number of ways. Some are shot, stabbed or beaten; others are killed in vehicle crashes; still others are felled by heart attacks linked to work stress or other maladies.
Western Pennsylvania already accounts for two of 2023’s casualties: Brackenridge police Chief Justin McIntire and McKeesport Officer Sean Sluganski, both of whom were gunned down.
Families, friends and communities mourn them.
But another group also grieves. They are the spouses, parents, children and siblings of law enforcement officers previously killed in the line of duty.
For many of these survivors, each new police death opens old wounds.
Some police widows have banded together in an informal network to reach out to newly bereft wives. The nonprofit Concerns of Police Survivors offers a safety net for grieving families.
But after the pageantry of the police funeral ends and the glare of the media spotlight fades, relatives are left to cope privately with an overwhelming loss that is often abrupt, violent and highly public.
Each family that suffers a police death walks a unique path. For newcomers, the veterans have a simple message: You are not alone.
What follows are stories of the journeys through loss taken by some of those left behind.
Ashley Spingola, 46, of Chartiers Township, Washington County, was married to Scott Bashioum, a Canonsburg police officer fatally shot Nov. 10, 2016, while responding to a domestic dispute. He was 52. His killer committed suicide.
Ashley Bashioum wondered why her husband hadn’t called.
Scott was on the overnight, the boys were asleep at their grandparents’. She was home alone.
A long day at the office lay ahead. But for those few moments before the sun rose, before Ashley learned the worst news of her life, it was calm.
They were crammed together, the four of them, in a one-bedroom place in Washington County’s countryside. Surrounded by fields, the house in Chartiers Township was a familiar refuge. Ashley had grown up on that very plot of land.
Scott and the two boys regularly traipsed through the nearby woods dotted with cherry trees and oaks, coyote dens and fox lairs.
Neighbors like Jim Horvath, then the police chief of their town, loved watching “Scotty” and his youngsters. Sometimes Horvath would pay the kids for eggs laid by chickens they kept in their yard. It was Norman Rockwell stuff.
That said, Horvath understood the dangers of police work, how easily tragedy could descend. He had known Joe Pokorny, the state police corporal gunned down in 2005 and left dead in the snow near a Carnegie hotel. And he knew Dave Dryer, the veterinarian who was a part-time police officer in East Washington, killed in 2011 during a traffic stop.
Horvath recognized a simple truth about small-town policing: It’s safe — until it isn’t.
“There’s no walls here,” said Horvath, who retired last year after three decades as chief. “We have the same problems as others.”
Whenever Scott worked the graveyard shift patrolling Canonsburg’s two square miles, he made sure to give Ashley a quick ring so she didn’t oversleep.
They tried to follow other rules:
Don’t go to bed mad.
Say “I love you.”
Always kiss goodbye.
But when they worked opposite schedules, as had been the case for a few weeks, things got tricky. Sometimes he left before they saw each other. The goodbye kiss would get lost in the shuffle.
“Unfortunately,” Ashley said, “the night he died, that’s exactly what happened.”
St. Clair police Officer Lloyd Reed Jr., 54, of Hollsopple, Somerset County, was the husband of Rose Reed, 61. He was shot and killed Nov. 28, 2015, while confronting a man involved in a domestic dispute. His shooter was acquitted of murder charges.
Sometimes Lloyd Reed would make a joke and crack himself up, laughing so hard that tears would well in his eyes. Rose would just shake her head, chuckle and play along. She couldn’t imagine what he found so funny.
More than seven years on, she finds herself missing her husband’s corny jokes.
They’re part of the absent pieces of Rose’s life, like watching NASCAR races together on Sundays or going trout fishing. Rose always counted on Lloyd to take her catch off the hook because she didn’t want to touch the slimy stuff.
The Reeds lived in a modest house in Hollsopple, a mining patch in Somerset County about a half-hour from Lloyd’s job as a police officer in St. Clair. Twice a day, a short train chugged by, the tracks just steps from their door.
Rose, a native of Queens, N.Y., moved as a girl to Stoystown, about 25 miles south of Johnstown. She never left the area, though traces of her Astoria accent linger.
Lloyd, a Conemaugh Township High School graduate, liked to work on cars. He regularly bought scratch-off lottery tickets. An Army veteran, he had spent the last 25 years working for various small police departments in a tight radius, always sticking close to his roots.
Lloyd carried the same name as his father. Everyone called him Junior. But to Rose — more formally, Rosemarie — he was always Lloyd.
As a couple, they embraced small pleasures: movies, joy rides, the Steelers.
But there was one thing they didn’t share: Lloyd’s experiences on the job.
“He never talked to me about police work,” Rose said. “That was one thing he kept from me that I kind of wish he didn’t so I was prepared for what was going to happen.”
Kim Weigand, 63, of Reading Township, Adams County, founded the Pennsylvania chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, a national organization that assists families of police officers who have died in the line of duty, after her son was killed. Latimore Township police Sgt. Michael C. Weigand died Sept. 14, 2008, when a speeding pickup slammed into the police motorcycle he was riding while escorting a charity motorcycle ride. He was 25.
Kim Weigand wasn’t just the mother of a cop. She was the wife of one, too.
Father and son were both named Michael. They worked together, even when her husband became chief and her son rose to sergeant at the Latimore Police Department in Adams County, near Gettysburg.
They shared a motorcycle, which stayed parked at the Weigands’ home in Reading Township. Michael, wife Amanda and their daughter lived a few miles away.
Kim grew up in Allegheny County’s North Hills. When she got married, her husband was a lineman for a utility company but then made a big move: He switched to policing in the late 1970s, working for Kilbuck and Ohio townships.
“I supported him,” Kim said. “It was a mutual decision. When he graduated, of course I was proud of him. A little nervous about it. At that age — we were young — I guess it was the mindset of everybody: It can’t happen to me.”
Their son also didn’t start out as a police officer. He had designs on teaching special education. But in high school, his perspective changed.
Kim remembers the moment he divulged his plans.
During graduation, Michael was pushing a friend in a wheelchair across the field when he looked up at his parents. “I want to go to the police academy!” he yelled.
Before long, Kim’s husband and son were partners.
“It was nerve-wracking,” she said. “But I knew that if something happened, they each had each other’s backs.”
Except on the day that Michael died, there wasn’t a thing his father could do to protect him.
Charlotte Carrabotta, 73, of Rockwood, Somerset County, is the mother of Samuel Hicks, a 33-year-old FBI agent in the Pittsburgh field office who was fatally shot Nov. 19, 2008, by a drug dealer’s wife during a raid at their Indiana Township home. His killer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was released from prison last year.
Sam was a dynamic kid, towheaded and green-eyed, fascinated by everything, failing at nothing.
There was little he couldn’t do. Before submerging himself undercover as a narcotics detective on the rough streets of Baltimore, before he grew to 6 feet 1, sinewy with muscle, Sam Hicks reveled in a rural Westmoreland County childhood.
Risks never deterred him. Sam barrelraced quarter horses, skied and snowboarded. He pitched in Little League, excelled at soccer and later dabbled in ice hockey. He hunted, earned badges in Eagle Scouts, and collected shells and sand dollars at the beach.
Sam had an artistic side, too, strumming the guitar, drawing and rolling dice during Friday night Dungeons & Dragons quests with friends.
Raised in Scottdale, Sam was the product of a Montessori education. The school was a godsend to his mother, Charlotte Carrabotta, a teacher raising three children.
Charlotte and Sam — he was always Samuel to her — clicked. They enjoyed a special bond, even finishing each other’s sentences.
It wasn’t just that he was Charlotte’s firstborn. Sam had a knack for making everything fun. And he delighted his mother in other ways. Once she overheard him giving advice to his little sister, Emily.
Do the right thing, and 99% of the time you don’t have to worry, he counseled.
Like any teenager, Sam wasn’t perfect. But overall, Charlotte approved of his choices — in life, in friends, in his decisions. As Charlotte watched Sam flourish, she appraised him with both a mother’s eye and a teacher’s.
He struck her as a natural leader, a trait for which his future colleagues at the FBI would one day praise him.
“Sam was unafraid to lead but never sought the spotlight,” FBI Director Robert Mueller III said at Sam’s funeral. “He excelled at everything he tried. And he never stopped trying.”
Charlotte remembers sitting Sam down in seventh grade.
You have a leadership ability, she told him. Be sure that you’re leading ain the right direction.
Sam was trying to do just that when a drug dealer’s wife gunned him down.
They met at firehall bingo one night around 2006 in Washington County when Scott was calling the numbers.
Ashley watched him charm the older ladies. He was personable, friendly, easy to talk to. She took note of how he interacted with his teenage daughters, Faren and Catherine, who were volunteering.
Later that evening, they ran into each other at a BP station down the road. He was gassing up his worn, gray-and-black pickup; she ended up at the pump next to him.
They made small talk, and then Scott handed her a Post-it note with his name and phone number. It was her move. So she made it.
Ashley had little interest in taking it slowly. She wasn’t where she had planned to be in life. In fact, she felt like she was headed in the opposite direction. Already 30. Divorced. No kids. She wanted someone to spend her life with. She wanted a family.
As their relationship deepened, Ashley saw how Scott doted on his girls. She liked that he helped others, whether through his military service or volunteer firefighting.
They bonded over baseball and country music. He loved to fly fish, and she adored the outdoors. When he bought a little boat to dart around Cross Creek Lake, she joined him.
Of course, there were differences. Ashley was an athlete; he wasn’t. More significantly, he was 12 years older. She realized that when he graduated from high school, she was still in kindergarten.
Where does this go from here, Ashley wondered, because I want to have children.
To her delight, Scott did, too.
At that point, he wasn’t yet a cop. An Air Force veteran who built and tore down runways in Iraq and Kuwait, Scott returned from the Middle East to his hometown of Smith Township in Washington County and joined the roads department.
Early in their relationship, the couple talked about what he did for a living. Play in the dirt with trucks, he joked. But what did he really want to do? Be a police officer, he confided. No one, he told her, had ever supported his dream.
Check into it, Ashley suggested. What’s the worst that can happen?
Their first encounter could have ended with a ticket, not a wedding. Rose ran a stop sign in Hooversville, a tiny borough in Somerset County. Lloyd pulled her over but let her off with a warning.
People who knew them thought they should go on a date. At first glance, the two seemed like opposites.
Rose was quiet, not at all like Lloyd. She worked retail jobs at Walmart and a grocery store.
Lloyd, meanwhile, had a reputation: Aggressive. Macho. Gung-ho about police work.
“The word around town was that he was this big, bad police officer, and I guess the friends and everybody thought that I would tame him down,” Rose said.
Shortly after the traffic stop, Lloyd called. They ate dinner together. It was awkward. But that first date turned into an eight-year courtship. Their wedding took place in 2000 at Bethel United Methodist Church, a stone’s throw from their house.
“I saw another side of him,” Rose said. “Behind the big, bad man he was a gentle person. He was a gentle, kind soul.”
When her husband and son worked overnight, Kim usually didn’t get much uninterrupted sleep.
The Weigands kept a police scanner in the house. Calls constantly burst forth, radios crackling, disembodied voices riding the ether. Every hour, the dispatcher would call out the officers’ numbers and await acknowledgment. It was a safety measure, a sacred call and response. For another hour, another shift, another week, they were OK.
Kim paid attention. She couldn’t help it. The time didn’t matter: 3 a.m., 4 a.m. She kept an ear out for her guys.
“I always listened to their responses,” she said. “If the phone rang in the middle of the night, I had the mindset, ‘This is it.’ But you’re never ready for that call.”
Kim made sure they kissed her goodbye when they headed out the door. They were trained to call if there was an incident. She would be listening, and they knew it.
About a year before Michael died, he and Kim were standing next to each other at a picnic. A band was playing the Bob Dylan classic “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
Mom, he said, if anything happens to me, I want this song played.
Kim waved it off.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
The May before Michael’s death, the family went to National Police Week, an annual remembrance ceremony in Washington, D.C., for officers who have died in the line of duty.
At the candlelight vigil, Kim found herself between the guys. She looked at her son.
“Don’t you ever put me on that side,” she told him.
He scoffed.
“I got the look,” she recalled. “Four months later, he was killed in the line of duty.”
Les Bashioum, 81, of the Slovan section of Smith Township in Washington County, is the father of Scott Bashioum, the Canonsburg police officer killed in 2016.
Even when Scott deployed to Iraq, Les Bashioum didn’t fret.
“I never worried about Scott getting shot and killed in that job,” he said.
But policing? That didn’t sit right with him.
Les respected police officers and their work. He just didn’t want his son to be part of it.
He remembers when Canonsburg’s former police chief called to ask about Scott, a job candidate at the time.
“Please don’t hire him,” Les said.
Why? Is he a bad guy?
“He’s a wonderful son. Please don’t hire him. … You’re gonna call me someday, and I don’t want to get the message you’re going to give me.”
How could you possibly know?
“I just know Scott’s gonna get it.”
Les asked the chief to strip away the extra civil service points awarded to Scott for being in the military.
But his pleas didn’t matter. His son got the job.
When Scott visited Les to tell him, he wanted to know why his father wasn’t happier for him.
Aren’t you proud?
“I said, ‘I’m very proud of you, son, but I don’t want to lose you.’”
“He said, ‘Dad, I’m working in Canonsburg. What can happen in Canonsburg?’ I said, ‘Son, it can happen anywhere. People these days are super ugly.’”
For years, Sam dreamed of the FBI.
Charlotte spotted the interest early on, driven partly by Sam’s exposure to a friend’s father who was a state trooper.
At 14, Sam attended Camp Cadet, the state police summer program.
“He loved it,” Charlotte said. “I think that’s what sealed the deal.”
Sam graduated, first from Southmoreland High School and then from the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry.
He moved to Maryland, by then familiar territory. Sam had worked summers managing a pool company in Ocean City.
There was another attraction: a lifeguard from Baltimore named Brooke. She would become his wife.
Sam took a job teaching high school in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills. But he wouldn’t finish the school year.
He set his sights on a now-defunct federal program called Police Corps, designed to attract college-educated officers and offer tuition reimbursement. Baltimore promised him a spot.
Sam needed law enforcement experience first, so he briefly joined the department in Ocean City.
His next move would land him in the big leagues.
Scott attended the police academy at night. He was dedicated. On their wedding day in 2007 — he and Ashley married at a chapel in Winchester, Va., by an officiant who looked like Elvis — there was just enough time to zip into a McDonald’s before returning to Pennsylvania for class.
After nine months, Cole was born. Carson followed 18 months later.
“When we realized we were going to be together, it wasn’t like we waited a whole lot of time. … He wasn’t getting any younger, and I wasn’t either,” Ashley said. “I believe that everybody’s brought into your life for a reason. When you meet the right person, everything just lines up the way it’s supposed to.”
Everything was lining up with Scott.
They lived in her grandparents’ old place on a peaceful five-acre spread right next to where she grew up. As a girl, Ashley had a pony. It was quiet and tranquil. Her parents were next door.
Scott merged his passions by taking special training for motor enforcement, learning how to spot overweight or unsafe trucks. There was the occasional excitement. Once, he landed in the hospital after hurting his ankle during a foot chase.
“Back then I’m thinking, ‘This is awful,’” Ashley said. “Little did I know it could be so much worse.”
As time wore on, if something was happening in Canonsburg, Scott would call or text to let her know that he was all right. She worried more than she used to, but “up until the day it happened, I would have told you this would never happen here.”
The night before Scott’s death, Ashley worked late. She had to be up extra early the next morning, a mild November Thursday, to get to her accounting job in North Fayette. Scott had dropped the kids with her folks and gone to work.
She was going to swing by the station to say hi but decided to go straight home instead. Scott had left dinner on the stove. His mug, still partly filled with black coffee, sat on the counter.
Scott’s last texts to Ashley brim with sweetness and concern.
“Please tell me you are leaving soon babe,” he wrote.
“I’m on my way love,” Ashley answered.
“OK get home safe. Let me know when you do OK.”
“Will you be upset if I don’t stop?” Ashley asked.
“No love,” he wrote back, inserting a heart emoji. “Just be safe. Maybe a kiss on your way in the morning.”
“Perfect.”
Lloyd’s last meal was a gut-busting Thanksgiving feast. Instead of celebrating on the holiday itself in 2015, Rose and her brother Joseph’s family got together two days later, a Saturday, when everyone could make it.
Lloyd loved turkey and mashed potatoes. The desserts that day were right up his alley — two kinds of pie: pumpkin and chocolate banana pudding.
Normally skittish around kids, Lloyd was charmed by his great-nephew, Quincy, only a few months old. Lloyd held the baby, which was unusual for him.
Rose, watching, grew wistful. She felt that they were too old to have kids. They were in their 50s. She wondered what would have happened had they met earlier.
Lloyd got up to go. They exchanged “I love yous.” Then her husband was gone, detouring on his way to the station to buy lottery tickets.
They didn’t keep a police scanner in the house, Lloyd had made sure of that, so Rose wouldn’t listen and worry. She turned in early.
“You don’t think about these really bad things when you’re from a small town, so I had no trouble sleeping,” she said. “I always knew he was going to come home.”
With two of the most important constants in her life working as police officers, Kim couldn’t help but absorb some of their vigilance.
She developed a heightened alertness. If she went out in public, she would cast about to see if anything struck her as amiss. Kim prayed a lot. And she leaned on other police families.
She would need every bit of their support on Sept. 14, 2008. That day, Michael and his dad were going to escort a charity ride near Gettysburg. The weather would be perfect, with the forecast calling for clear skies and temperatures in the 80s.
The night before, the chief asked Michael if he wanted to ride the departmental bike. Kim remembers the conversation.
That’s a stupid question, Michael told his father. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day. Of course I want to motor.
In the morning, Kim went to help with registration for the ride. She heard “Kickstands out!” — her husband’s signal for everyone to mount their motorcycles.
Michael started to walk to his bike when Kim stopped him.
“Huh-uh,” she said. “You know the rules. I get a kiss.”
They embraced.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too, Mom. I’ll see you at the end of the ride.”
Charlotte had qualms about Baltimore.
Big city. High crime. A world away from Scottdale.
Sam handed her a copy of “The Corner,” author David Simon’s raw account of a year in the life of a Baltimore inner-city neighborhood.
She knew exactly what Sam was getting into. But she also knew he was doing what he loved.
“I can’t tell you I was thrilled,” Charlotte said. “You have to put it out of your mind.”
Charlotte worried about all of her children. But she respected that they were adults and made their own choices.
She trusted Sam’s intense training, which Charlotte said he compared to the rigor of the FBI’s.
Sam started out like everyone else — at the bottom. He directed traffic at ballgames, made vehicle stops, caught the usual rookie assignments. But he steadily worked his way up to undercover narcotics detective.
Charlotte appreciated how Sam strove to keep on an even keel. He separated work and home so he could pay attention to Brooke and their son, Noah.
“He knew how to prioritize. He didn’t listen to scanners. When his shifts were done, when his surveillances were done, that was done for the day,” Charlotte said.
Sam, who hated wearing suits, adopted a trademark look: white T-shirt and blue jeans. Once, when they went out to eat in Baltimore, Charlotte noticed that he had a weapon under his shirt. He called it his “personal protection” gun, she said. He told her that he always carried it.
That made an impression.
In 2002, a sniper terrorized the Washington, D.C., area. Charlotte asked if it was close by. Sam seemed nonchalant.
“He just had that, ‘This is the way it is,’” Charlotte said. “I did worry, but it can’t consume you.”
Few things outwardly rattled Sam. But cases involving children distressed him. And one incident in particular left him shaken. A police officer was killed in front of Sam, Charlotte said.
Nearly a year later, surrounded by colleagues, Sam would suffer the same fate.
When she woke before dawn, Ashley realized her phone hadn’t rung. She texted Scott at 4:55 a.m.
“Are you OK?”
No answer.
She didn’t panic. Right or wrong, in Scott’s seven years of policing, Ashley didn’t spend much time thinking that one day he might go to work but not return.
“As naive as it sounds, these kinds of things don’t happen in towns like Canonsburg,” Ashley said. “Boy, was I wrong.”
Ashley cut through the front yard on the way to her Buick. The sun hadn’t risen, the grass was damp. Although it was Nov. 10, the air was warm enough that she didn’t throw on a coat over her black shirt and jeans. Suddenly, as she walked through the darkness, a text popped up from a number she didn’t recognize.
I heard what’s going on in Canonsburg and hope that Scott is home safe.
Ashley was baffled. She texted back.
Who is this? And what are you talking about?
It was a neighbor.
Two police officers were shot in Canonsburg. One is dead, the other is in the hospital.
Ashley knew there were only three officers on the overnight shift. She knew that the odds for Scott weren’t good.
Soon, she would learn that around 3 a.m., Scott and his colleague, James Saieva, had been dispatched in separate vehicles to a domestic disturbance at a duplex.
A gunman firing from the second floor ambushed them.
Saieva was wounded while still in his patrol car. Scott made it out of the driver’s seat before taking two bullets. He managed to return fire.
The shooter, who had killed his pregnant wife and boobytrapped his SUV and home, committed suicide. Scott was whisked to Canonsburg Hospital.
Ashley raced to the police station. By the time she got there, news trucks were already parked across the street. She saw the mayor, a cop she knew and Horvath, her local police chief and neighbor.
The mayor delivered the news.
Scott was shot. He didn’t make it.
Ashley screamed. Horvath said he’ll never forget that sound.
Then Ashley crumpled.
“You could just see the bewilderment on her face,” Horvath said. “She was crying and hysterical the whole time.”
Horvath drove Ashley to the hospital in silence. She was in shock. Ashley glanced at the first room she passed; she could tell it was where doctors had frantically worked on her husband. Then they took her to Scott.
She was scared. What would he look like? It didn’t feel real.
A sheet covered Scott’s body. She could see his face, unmarked.
Ashley knelt beside him.
Later, she texted her mom. Unplug all the TVs and stay home with the boys, she directed. She knew that Cole watched the news each morning. She didn’t want their kids to learn like that.
To this day, Ashley second-guesses herself. Was that the right decision? Should she have given her boys and her parents the chance to see Scott and say goodbye?
Then Scott’s folks arrived.
“His dad pointed at him and said, ‘This is exactly what I was afraid of,’” Ashley said. “I didn’t know he felt that way.”
Ashley wanted to know about Scott’s last moments. Had he said anything? The doctor said no. A parade of family members began showing up. There were phone calls to make, organ donation personnel to greet, burning questions to ask about Scott’s killer. The coroner had to take his body for an autopsy.
It was a blur. Ashley felt like she was having an out-of-body experience.
Her next hurdle: breaking the news to Carson and Cole, then 7 and 8. When she did later that day, she called the boys into her parents’ game room.
You know your daddy had a very dangerous job, she told them, and a very bad man shot him today, and he did not live.
The boys just looked at her. No tears. No drama. They turned and went upstairs.
Were they too young to understand, Ashley wondered.
She believes they simply couldn’t comprehend what she was telling them.
It broke her heart.
A ringing phone wrenched Rose from sleep. It was her dearest friend.
“I thought something happened to her family, and she just said to me, ‘Rose, I gotta tell you something. I want you to get dressed.’ I said, ‘Why? What’s going on? Are you OK?’”
Rose’s friend fumbled for words. Then she blurted it out.
“Lloyd was shot.”
The worst that had ever happened to Lloyd on the job was tweaking his back after an accident on black ice. Getting shot? Unfathomable.
A single question kept tumbling around in Rose’s mind: Is he alive? Maybe Lloyd was shot in the arm, she told herself. Maybe it’s not that bad.
“At that time I assumed he was still alive,” Rose said. “He wasn’t, though.”
As Rose had fallen asleep hours earlier, a deadly drama was playing out in tiny New Florence, a community surrounded by St. Clair.
Around 9:15 p.m., Lloyd responded to a 911 call for a domestic dispute between a man and his girlfriend. Lloyd and the man exchanged gunfire.
Both were hit, Lloyd fatally, struck in the chest by a shot from a high-powered hunting rifle.
Soon, officers arrived at the house. Rose kept asking about her husband. Finally, someone gave her an answer.
Rose screamed. She went numb.
“He was my rock, and so was my girlfriend that called me that night,” Rose said. “They were my rocks in my life.”
As the charity ride proceeded, Kim got to the endpoint. What happens next remains seared in her mind.
Her cellphone rang. It was her husband, summoning her to a spot along the route.
“You need to come to Heidlersburg,” he said.
Kim didn’t need to hear any more. She knew.
“How bad is he?” Kim asked.
“They’re working on him.”
It happened on a two-lane asphalt road. Farmland on both sides. Michael was on the bike near the rear of the procession, which traveled at 45 mph. There were 10 motorcycles in all. The chief was in front, behind the wheel of his marked Latimore Township unit. Both Weigands had their emergency lights on. Bringing up the rear was a rescue unit, its lights also activated.
A man speeding down the road in the opposite direction lost control, crossed the double yellow line and veered into the oncoming lane. The truck struck Michael. The impact threw him from his bike and ruptured his heart.
As Kim rushed to her son, she spoke to God. She yelled at people.
Get the hell out of my way!
When she arrived, her husband ran to her.
You gave him life, she remembers he told her. I gave him the last breath of life.
In desperation, the chief had tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Kim wanted to see Michael. She said there wasn’t a scratch on him.
She knew her son was a big kidder, so she spoke to him.
This isn’t a joke. You need to open your eyes.
Kim told him she loved him.
And she made promises.
She pledged to work toward tougher laws to prevent officers from being killed in the same way. And she vowed to make him as proud of her as she was of him.
The phone rang at 7 a.m. Scott’s mom, Bobbette, picked up. A policeman was on the other end. She handed the receiver to Les.
Here’s how he recalls the conversation:
You’re gonna tell me he’s —
Yes, sir. I regret to tell you he’s no longer —
Oh my God. Oh my God. I can’t believe that. Oh my Lord. What do I do now?
I don’t know, sir.
Where is he?
At Canonsburg ER.
Maybe I should come there.
That might be a good start, sir.
Les hung up. He turned to Bobbie, told her that he was going to run down to take care of his horse and the dog, and then they were going for a ride because Scott had been killed.
Les called the other kids, Scott’s two brothers and sister, did what he needed to do for the animals, then sped off in his Mustang with his wife.
It isn’t gonna do any good if we both get killed, she told him.
When they arrived at the hospital, they ran into the chief who had hired Scott.
Les told him it wasn’t his fault that Scott had been shot, but it was his fault that he had hired his son.
Les said he forgave him.
Finally.
In 2007, Sam realized his dream. He joined the FBI.
That August, he was assigned to Pittsburgh. Counterterrorism.
Sam devoured books about terrorist cells. He trained in Amman, Jordan. A picture in Charlotte’s house captures him there, astride a camel. He wanted his son Noah to think he was cool.
Sam’s FBI classmates adored him. They liked that he had big-city police experience.
“Within weeks, he was considered the best on his squad,” Mueller said at his funeral. “New task force members simply assumed he was a veteran agent.”
The Wednesday that Sam died began as normally as could be for an FBI agent gearing up to take down a drug dealer.
Although he worked in counterterrorism, on that brisk morning, Nov. 19, 2008, Sam had a different role. He was part of a multijurisdictional arrest team — one of many — that was preparing to launch a synchronized series of raids, the culmination of a yearlong investigation.
Armed with an arrest warrant, Sam and his colleagues showed up before dawn at a dealer’s door in Indiana Township. They were coming for him and his cocaine.
In talking to Sam’s colleagues, Charlotte learned that her son was in his usual good spirits.
One of his teammates that day, a Pittsburgh police detective named Carla Kearns, had worked alongside Sam for months as part of a joint anti-terrorism task force at the FBI’s headquarters on Pittsburgh’s South Side. She sat a row over from him. They conducted surveillance, swapping stories about their young boys.
“I used to tease him, ‘What’s up, Smiley?’” said Kearns, now a sergeant. “That man was never sad. He never had a bad thing to say about anybody. He was always just a happy and upbeat and positive person.”
About 5 a.m., an hour before the raid, the eight arrest team members gathered not far from the target house. Kearns arrived a few minutes late. Sam couldn’t resist needling her.
“Of course he was busting my chops for being late,” she said.
Fanning out around the house, the team members took their positions. Sam planted himself at the front door, poised to enter.
But the dealer refused to let the police in. Sam, peering through a pane of glass, saw him run. “Hit the door!” he yelled. The team leader heaved a battering ram. It took multiple blows to force the door open. Even then, the door caught on the carpet and swung only part way. Sam squeezed his slender frame through.
No one counted on the dealer’s wife firing a handgun down a stairwell from the second floor. Just one shot.
The bullet struck Sam, sneaking past his protective vest.
Kearns saw Sam’s feet at the threshold. She called his name. No answer. Holstering her gun, she and her colleagues tugged on Sam’s legs, dragging him through the doorway and bringing him to cover behind a vehicle in the gravel driveway.
Sam was unresponsive. Kearns, a former paramedic, assessed him. He was bundled up because of the bitter cold. They removed his vest. Kearns started CPR while someone called for help.
It wasn’t until Kearns was inside the ambulance and Sam’s clothes were cut away that she could see that he had been shot in the chest. She desperately tried to stop the bleeding.
As doctors at UPMC St. Margaret worked on Sam, Kearns cleaned the blood off her hands. Soon after, they pronounced him dead.
“I tried to save Sam’s life,” Kearns said. “It’ll probably bother me forever that I couldn’t.”
Ashley excused herself from planning her husband’s memorial and stepped away for a bathroom break.
It was mere days since the ambush. Ashley moved through the funeral home in a fog.
From the other side of the stall, she heard a woman’s voice that she didn’t recognize.
Ashley, are you in here? I just wanted you to know, my husband was also killed in the line of duty.
The woman didn’t want to intrude. But she said that if Ashley needed anything, she was going to be just down the street at a coffee shop with a group of ladies, each one of whom understood. They were all widows whose husbands had been police officers.
There was no pressure, no pitch. They just wanted Ashley to know that she was not alone. The woman departed, leaving a sandwich bag on the counter with a pack of tissues.
That emissary was one of a small clutch of women in the Alle-Kiski Valley and Pittsburgh area who have taken it upon themselves to form a welcoming party. They greet the newest members of a grim sorority: a sisterhood of police officers’ widows.
Ashley didn’t take the offer. It came too soon. Sedated and anguished, she wasn’t in the right headspace. But she appreciated the gesture.
She knew that if she ever needed anything, she would just have to pick up the phone. Every anniversary, she said, the group highlights Scott’s name on social media. He is not forgotten.
“You feel them there,” Ashley said.
She’s never gotten herself to the point of conducting in-person outreach like they do. She said she’s not strong enough yet.
But she has her own way.
She sent Facebook messages to the families of Justin McIntire, the Brackenridge police chief gunned down Jan. 2 by a fugitive, and of Sean Sluganski, the McKeesport officer killed Feb. 6 while responding to a domestic dispute.
Just to let them know: I’m with you.
“When you lose them in this arena,” Ashley said, “it’s not something you can go through alone.”
Sluganski’s death, in particular, got to her. She saw parallels with what happened to Scott. Domestic dispute. One officer killed. Partner wounded. A child left behind.
“I don’t know how I lived through it,” Ashley said. She feels for Sluganski’s fiancee and their young daughter.
“Now there’s this woman left with her child and she’s faced with: How do I rebuild my life? How do I move forward?” Ashley said. “I wish there was just a way that you could help somebody navigate through this, and the truth is there isn’t because it’s going to be different for every single person.”
For Ashley, the road forward hurt.
She is distanced from some of Scott’s family. She doesn’t have a relationship with the Canonsburg Police Department. She remarried — too quickly for some.
For a long time, Ashley was angry that Scott’s murderer killed himself. She had things she wanted to say to him. She calls him a coward.
But after passing through that crucible of bitterness, she found herself incrementally changing. She recognized all that she had taken for granted — that while Scott was alive there was an expectation that there would always be another fishing trip, another birthday, another Christmas. She learned to live differently because she realized how quickly it can all be snatched away.
“You’ve experienced it, and you know what you have to lose,” Ashley said. “We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Scott. We didn’t get a chance to tell him how much he was loved.”
Someone had to help Rose into the police car for the ride to Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown. Inside, she was falling apart.
As they drove in silence, police hunted for the wounded suspect, who had swum across the Conemaugh River. He was finally arrested after eluding a dragnet for six hours.
Rose remembers little about what came next. The Western Pennsylvania Police Benevolent Foundation arrived and made all the arrangements for Lloyd’s highly specialized funeral.
Numb as she was, Rose was content to cede the decision-making. In hindsight, she wishes she could have been more involved, but she was in no condition.
Rose appreciated the enormous turnout for the funeral, the rows of police officers in their crisp dress uniforms, black bands snug on their badges, the bagpipes and honor guard, the slow, precise salutes and flags at half-staff. But all the pomp was so very unlike Lloyd.
As pallbearers loaded Lloyd’s flag-covered casket into the hearse, a stricken Rose stood in front of the church, propped up by her brother and one of Lloyd’s fellow officers. Rigid state troopers faced her, right arms horizontal, stiff hands snapped to hat brims.
“I’m a very private person and so was Lloyd,” Rose said. “I think that’s why I hid in the house for two years. Even his viewing, it was people after people after people after people giving you their condolences. Don’t get me wrong. It was beautiful. But also overwhelming.
Kim followed through on both promises to her son.
She helped make things safer. In 2010, state legislators passed Act 81 — the Sgt. Michael C. Weigand Law, now also known as the Move Over Law — which tightened the rules and penalties governing drivers approaching emergency vehicles.
Then she worked to make Michael proud by forming the state chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, a national nonprofit that aids the families of first responders who die in the line of duty. More than a decade later, she’s still running the show, giving parents, spouses and siblings in Pennsylvania a critical support system.
Before those accomplishments, though, Kim suffered.
She couldn’t sleep or eat that first week. She lived on coffee and cigarettes. She and her husband would pass each other on the stairs in the middle of the night like ghosts.
“We were floundering,” she said. “My husband describes it as we were both in different canoes in a raging river with no paddles, and we couldn’t even get to each other.”
Kim couldn’t shut off her mind. The TV became her constant companion at bedtime. Even now, years later, the set has to be on when she turns in. Kim didn’t want to leave her house. When she did, she hid her roiling emotions.
“You have a mask you put on when you go out in public,” she said.
A few months after the funeral, Kim and her husband went to a Concerns of Police Survivors event in Maryland where departments were taught how to handle line-of-duty deaths.
The Weigands had signed up before Michael had died. Kim bawled through the keynote address. She felt embarrassed. Whenever she looked up, she felt like the speaker’s eyes were on her.
After the presentation, the speaker approached and asked how she was. OK, Kim said. It was what she told everyone.
Now tell me how you’re really doing.
“I feel like I’m in a deep pit I can’t get out of,” Kim told her.
“She said, ‘Honey, you take my hand, I’m gonna pull you out of that pit.’”
For decades, Les ran a trucking company. He hauled everything — food, chemicals, hazardous materials. Drove coast to coast, all over the country.
On the road, Les encountered plenty of death. He said he once saw a man’s head crushed between two trucks.
But no violent loss of life ever shook him like what happened to Scott. Les said he hasn’t been right since.
“It’s been seven years, and I’m still feeling the same as I did when I got that phone call,” Les said. “There’s all kinds of ways to grieve. I guess I haven’t figured out the way yet.”
Scott was 52. But he was still Les’ child. He called his son “Skippy.”
“We hunted, we fished, we did everything together,” Les said.
Les said they shared the distinction of flunking third grade. Scott’s middle name was his dad’s: Leslie. They indulged in a good-natured competition for the first deer on opening day of hunting season. Scott always won.
Les said life was wonderful until Scott died. Now, at 81, caring for an ailing wife, he doesn’t know what to do. Scott’s death has changed him.
Once so capable, he doesn’t feel that way anymore. Panic attacks debilitate him. His dog, a German shepherd, moans upon sensing Les’ distress.
“My life ended then,” Les said. “I can’t function right. I can’t think right. It’s mind-blowing, I don’t know … my brain don’t work right. I have to double think everything.”
They found Charlotte at the high school.
She had left instructions: If her husband or daughter ever called, patch it through to the classroom.
She knew they would interrupt her only in an emergency.
Nov. 19, 2008, was an emergency. The bell rang, classes were changing, and the phone jingled. It was Emily.
Mom, I have to tell you something. I hope you’re sitting down. They’re trying to find you.
Who? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Mom, Samuel’s been killed.
Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Only a few nights earlier, she and Sam were hammering out plans for Thanksgiving the following week. That year, it fell on what would have been Sam’s 34th birthday.
Are you on drugs? Charlotte asked her daughter. Emily, what is wrong with you?
Mom, I’m telling you the truth. It’ll just be minutes before they’re there. I want you to be prepared.
Students began filing in. They sensed something was wrong. The room was quiet.
Charlotte hung up and plopped down at a desk. A student approached.
Mrs. C, do you need a hug?
I’m not sure what I need now, Charlotte answered.
Then the superintendent appeared, joined by the principal, a guidance counselor and a teacher. Two FBI agents walked in.
Charlotte refused to believe it.
I don’t think you have the right person.
They insisted that they did.
I don’t think so, she said. He was so good and so careful.
Ashley Bashioum is now Ashley Spingola. Her husband, who she’s known since she was in eighth grade, is not a cop.
“Now I’ll tell anyone I know — do not be a police officer,” Ashley said. “Find a new job.”
They married nine months after Scott died. She knows what some people might think. She shrugs it off.
Grief is different for everyone. Getting remarried doesn’t mean she forgot. She’ll tell you that it means she figured out how to move on.
Now 46, her days are filled with corralling her dogs and raising her boys. Sometimes questions pop up from the kids about Scott.
Where did he die? One of the boys thought it was at a mall. How old would he have been this year?
Her youngest can’t conjure Scott’s face when he closes his eyes.
The grieving was so public. She felt like she was never alone. People would stop her at the mall. Aren’t you that police officer’s wife? We saw you speak at the funeral. Reporters showed up at her house. She stayed with her parents for weeks, cops parked outside around the clock, returning home only once to pick up Scott’s military uniform for his funeral — the leftovers and partly filled coffee mug still haunting the kitchen.
Pictures and video of the funeral were splashed everywhere. The turnout and attention drove home to Ashley how solemn the occasion was, the importance of Scott’s job, the realization that it was not for nothing, that his intervention that morning might have saved the lives of others.
At the same time, an intimate moment for Scott’s family became one shared with a television audience.
“Scott deserved every bit of the attention that he got as far as I’m concerned, but it didn’t make it easy,” Ashley said.
The trial was grueling.
Rose stayed in Greensburg so she could be near the courthouse.
She had a solid support system: her best friend, police officers, a chaplain. But the courtroom was uncomfortably small. Even though her team formed a buffer zone, the shooter’s family sat too close for her liking.
Each day, Rose cupped Lloyd’s silver-colored badge in her hands. Patrolman, it said. St. Clair Twp Police Dept. She rubbed it incessantly, so much that she wore down the enamel in some of the lettering.
Testimony lasted for six days. The jury deliberated for 20 hours. Jurors were conflicted. Did Lloyd fire first? Did the shooter know he was a police officer?
Rose prayed for a guilty verdict. It could mean a death sentence.
Instead, there was an acquittal on the most serious counts of murder as the shooter’s lawyers successfully argued self-defense.
Rose was furious. She went to therapy to help her cope with Lloyd’s death and to aid her in grappling with her anger over the trial. The therapist gave Rose the tools she needed to move forward.
Still, whenever Rose hears the news of police officers being killed, it brings her right back to Lloyd’s death.
“It sickens me, these police officers getting murdered,” she said.
Rose doesn’t work anymore. She has bad knees and breathing problems. Financially, she’s OK. When they were first married, she and Lloyd scraped by. Police officers in small towns don’t make much. He spent years working part-time at various departments — Seven Springs, Hooversville, Seward and St. Clair. He also worked as a security guard. His death benefits gave Rose some breathing room. He “blessed her,” she said.
Though Rose’s inner turmoil has subsided, it hasn’t disappeared. Rose no longer dwells on the incident or trial. But Lloyd is always on her mind.
“It has gotten a little bit easier, but the grief never goes away, because he’s not walking through that door,” she said.
One of the few things that Kim remembers from the funeral is the drone of the helicopter.
She leaned over to the chief.
That better not be a news station.
It’s OK, he told her. It was the state police.
The chopper came in low, close enough that she could see the pilot, who dipped the front of the bird in a salute.
Somewhere, there’s a video of the funeral. Kim has never watched it. But she can manage to look at the pictures that someone turned into a book.
Paging through, studying mourners’ faces and expressions, soothes her. She can see that they felt her loss.
Kim understands that no two people grieve alike. She knows that the death of a child can pull spouses apart. But in her case, it made the Weigands closer. They leaned on each other. And they maintained a close relationship with their daughter-in-law, who still calls them mom and dad.
After his son was buried, the chief returned to work.
“His goal was to finish Mike’s career for him,” Kim said. “He’s a strong man, a very strong man. He wanted to honor Mike.”
Now Kim takes on the grief of others. At first she would go to the funeral homes when officers died, but she couldn’t endure the viewing room. It took a long time to be able to walk up to another casket and not see her son.
These days Kim tries to make little groups, connecting spouses with spouses, siblings with siblings, parents with parents — the better the chance for people to bond who understand a distinct type of pain.
The loss is different for each group. And in Kim’s mind, the death of a police officer is a different kind of death because it’s so public.
It’s been a rough start to the year. First McIntire. Then Sluganski. And then a Temple University police sergeant.
Michael’s death always hovers in the background.
“It’s almost like opening a scab,” Kim said. “But then you kick into, ‘That family needs me. That department needs us.’”
The recent police deaths hit Les hard.
“I hurt for every one of those dads now,” he said. “I hurt for every one of those families.”
Other parents have helped him get through the past seven years. Kim Weigand. Max Sciullo, whose son, Paul, was one of three Pittsburgh police officers killed in 2009.
“We’re a family. It’s an ugly family in a way. It’s an ugly reason why we’re together,” Les said.
Les feels that sometimes the parents of slain police officers are overlooked. So he appreciates the outreach and empathy from Canonsburg’s mayor and police chief. He commends the Canonsburg department for embracing him and his wife, for including them each year at a luncheon in Scott’s memory.
Les remains proud of his son, proud that when he responded to the domestic dispute that took his life, Scott was all business, proud that despite being ambushed he managed to empty his gun at the window from where the shooter was firing.
“He just got out of the car like, ‘OK, I’m gonna do my job,’” Les said. “He was one hell of a shot.”
Now Les is left with his lifetime of memories. All he wants, he said, is for people to love, honor and respect his son and the police.
“I don’t go to the cemetery,” Les said. “You know why? My son ain’t there. My son’s in heaven. I talk to him every night in my dreams. He’s a part of my life.”
Sam’s boss, FBI Director Mueller, was traveling to Pittsburgh to pay his respects.
Charlotte remembers exactly how they were all arranged in Sam and Brooke’s Richland townhouse during Mueller’s visit.
She described the tableau like a painting frozen in time.
Charlotte sat on the couch, husband Don to her left. On her right was Sam’s younger brother, Benjamin, his head on her shoulder. Emily, at her feet, hand around Charlotte’s leg.
The following week, Mueller would eulogize Sam at a Baltimore church. But now, a personal touch was needed from the head of the agency for which Sam had given his life.
At one point, Charlotte recalled, her daughter turned to her.
Our team is broken, Emily said.
That’s when it hit: Samuel was really gone. Charlotte, who hadn’t cried over the past two days, lost her composure.
Tears flowed, pouring from a well so deep she hadn’t known it existed.
She felt broken inside. Broken and empty.
Ashley has good days and bad days. The bad ones come for no particular reason. She’s taken it to be part of the grieving process. She’s moved past all the milestones of the first year.
But time only brings new milestones, like Scott’s daughter’s wedding, the birth of his first grandchild.
“These are the kinds of things he should be around to see, and it was taken away senselessly and with no good reason,” Ashley said.
It’s not fair. She knows that. And she knows how dreadful and far-reaching the impact of one angry, armed man has been.
“It’s infuriating. When I think about how he died, it’s just so unnecessary. He was trying to help someone, and this is what he gets?” Ashley said. “You took something away from a whole lot of people. You turned off a light in our lives. And we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to turn it back on.”
For companionship, Rose relies on two chihuahuas, brothers named Poncho and Cisco.
Before them, the Lloyds had another chihuahua named Tazz.
Protective of Rose, Tazz would nip at Lloyd’s face when he leaned in to kiss her. Sometimes the bites landed.
Despite their love-hate relationship, Tazz and Lloyd formed a crucial part of Rose’s family, one that disintegrated before her eyes.
A few years back, Rose finally received Lloyd’s effects. They had been held for evidence in the trial.
His reading glasses. A flag pin. A few other sundries.
Today they sit in a small room that doubles as Rose’s office, along with the American flag from Lloyd’s casket and various plaques and medals.
“I miss his corny jokes and wonder if we’d still be at NASCAR today,” Rose said. “Would we still be trout fishing? And, yes, he’d still be scratching tickets.”
When they were ready to bury her husband, someone — Rose isn’t sure who — tucked something special into his casket:
The lottery tickets that Lloyd bought on the way to work his final shift.
Whenever Kim travels to Washington, D.C., she visits the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Judiciary Square. Carved lions guard their bronze cubs and watch over the nearly 24,000 officers whose names are engraved on the two curving limestone walls.
Michael’s is among them.
They often visit on Valentine’s Day, Michael’s birthday, and sit by the reflecting pool among the plantings. The weight of history and personal tragedy hang heavy. But something lightens the burden.
“You sit there,” Kim said, “and you feel like you’re being hugged by the thousands of officers on the wall.”
Sam’s widow, Brooke, left Pennsylvania. Too many memories. It pained Charlotte at first, how Brooke forged ahead without Sam. But she understood. And she’s sure her son would have approved.
“Samuel would never want her to be by herself,” Charlotte said. “I think that’s why he married her, because they talked about him going into law enforcement. She knew the risk; he knew the risk. He planned ahead. Even though you don’t want it to ever happen, once she got herself together through the holidays that year, it was, ‘OK, we need a plan.’”
Media coverage of Sam’s death sometimes stung Charlotte. She felt that certain outlets glorified the shooter, who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released from federal prison in January 2022.
“That’s one of the hardest things for me — to be so good, to be so good, and that’s the way his life was taken, bled out on the floor.”
In her victim impact statement to the judge, Brooke put words to her anguish, describing how Sam’s death gutted her and shattered her family.
“I have to tell my child that one November morning his hard-working, honest-living father got up to go to work, walked out the door and never came home.”
Charlotte returned to school right away. Her co-workers created a safe space. She didn’t have to talk about what happened. Their eyes didn’t fill with tears every time they saw her.
“Samuel wasn’t one to say, ‘Mom, sit around and cry,’” she said.
Charlotte, too, moved forward. She didn’t want to disappoint her son.
Not six months after Sam died, the three Pittsburgh police officers were gunned down in Stanton Heights. Charlotte went to some of the viewings, connected with the families. She felt obligated.
Different people have propped up Charlotte along her nearly 15-year journey. The FBI assigned her a victim specialist. They meet once a year. She still hears from people who were in Sam’s life.
Kearns, the Pittsburgh police sergeant, calls Charlotte every year.
A month after Sam died, Charlotte received a Christmas card from Kearns. She kept in her purse until it fell apart.
“She wanted me to know that she never left him,” Charlotte said. “He was never alone.”
Kearns’ experience prompted her to launch a Pittsburgh police peer support group. It’s grown to 20 members — officers trained to help their colleagues through crises. Kearns also works with a state trooper and an Allegheny County Police official to help plan police funerals, most recently those for McIntire and Sluganski.
Not one to wallow, Kearns pushed herself forward after Sam died. She kept busy, hitting the gym, raising her son. It helped that her husband is a police officer.
“I just made a decision, OK, I’m going to keep Sam’s memory alive, I’m going to figure out how to help our officers. I just poured my energy into that. I think that’s what got me through it,” Kearns said.
For Charlotte, there are reminders of Sam everywhere. The FBI building in Baltimore bears his name. A granite memorial honoring him went up in Indiana Township. Pittsburgh’s chapter of retired FBI agents is named after him. His flag rests on Charlotte’s mantel.
At 73, Charlotte tries to stay busy.
She volunteers at the Montessori school, surrounded by children like echoes of her past. It’s the same place where Sam once rambled the halls, so full of energy and potential, an innocent child with his whole life ahead of him.
Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) is a nonprofit with more than 50 chapters run by volunteers across the country. It has a clear mission statement: “Rebuilding shattered lives of survivors and co-workers affected by line-of-duty deaths.”
Launched in 1984 to serve 110 people, the group has swelled to more than 67,000 members. They are the relatives and co-workers of police officers who have died in the line of duty.
Federal guidelines defining line-of-duty deaths are expansive and include accidents, suicide and illness.
Headquartered in Camdenton, Mo., the group assists survivors through various programs including the annual National Police Survivors’ Conference held each May during National Police Week. C.O.P.S offers scholarships, hosts a children’s summer camp, puts on special retreats and grief seminars, and provides support to survivors during trials.
Funded through grants and donations, the group also conducts training for law enforcement agencies on how to respond to line-of-duty deaths.
Its 2021 tax filing with the IRS, the most recent available, showed $14 million in net assets.
“Survivors return time and time again to C.O.P.S.’ programs for support,” according to an entry in tax paperwork explaining the group’s accomplishments as part of its justification for tax-exempt status. “The first time they attend, they say it is because the event honors their fallen officer. The second time they attend a C.O.P.S. event, they do it for their own mental well-being. After that, they come to provide support to the more newly-bereaved families.”’
Even years later, the filing noted, survivors return to address still-unresolved emotional issues surrounding their loved ones’ death or because a perpetrator is coming up for parole.
“Peer support is the heart of this organization,” according to the group’s website. “You do not have to go through this alone.”
Jonathan D. Silver is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jonathan at jsilver@triblive.com.