On May 14, 1983, on the eve of the second annualNational Peace Officers' Memorial Service, ten young widows gathered around a table and talked about the tragedies that had fallen on their families that year and truly shattered their lives. Each and every widow had suffered the loss of their law enforcement spouse in the line of duty.
After hours of sharing their burden of grief and their tales of abandonment by the law enforcement agency, a young widow from Eau Claire, WI, Lynn Bolton (now BeBeau) approached Suzie Sawyer, then FOP Auxiliary National Secretary and Memorial Service Coordinator, and stated, "This is the greatest thing that has happened to me in the past year. I have finally found people who understand what I am having to deal with. Next year couldn't we have a seminar?"
Suzie Sawyer replied, "And what would we talk about -- death?"
"Yes," the young widow replied. "Somebody needs to talk about death in law enforcement!"
That was the birth of the concept of Concerns of Police Survivors, Inc. (C.O.P.S.), which was officially organized on May 14, 1984. On that day 110 law enforcement survivors from all across the country gathered for the first annual National Police Survivors' Seminarheld in Washington, DC. At that activity, the survivors voted unanimously to organize C.O.P.S as a totally separate entity from any police organization so the needs of any law enforcement surviving family could be met regardless of what police political affiliation the officer had with various police labor organizations.
In 1985 the National Institute of Justice funded a $174,000 grant to C.O.P.S which allowed C.O.P.S to do four things:
1. Function on a day-to-day basis for the good of police survivors nationwide.
2. Survey police survivors to see if the degree of trauma families experience when an officer is killed in the line of duty could be measured.
3. Survey agencies to see how prepared they are to handle line-of-duty death.
4. Fund the National Police Survivors' Seminars in 1985 and 1986.
Results from those surveys serve as the foundation for the C.O.P.S organization and the issues that need to be addressed for the good of all survivors. Since 1990, C.O.P.S has received a yearly $150,000 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, US Department of Justice, to help each new year's surviving families with coping with the trauma of line-of-duty death. Additional funding is now secured from a national direct-mail awareness program, special grants from the Japanese/American Agon Friendship Foundation, the Southeast Police Motorcycle Rodeo Committee, the National Association of Police Organizations, and many national, state, and local police organizations as well. Individual officers also contribute to C.O.P.S; and often when a law enforcement officer makes the ultimate sacrifice, people contribute to C.O.P.S in memory of the fallen officer.
C.O.P.S. has expanded its area of concern beyond the survivor issues. Experience has taught that law enforcement agencies must be trained to handle surviving families when line-of-duty death occurs since the majority of agencies lose an officer once every 20-30 years. C.O.P.S. has developed anational training programfor law enforcement agencies and officers on dealing with grief, developing general orders on officer death, promoting Peer Support Critical Incident Debriefing Teams, and promoting the awareness of law enforcement officer deaths across the country through Project Blue Light during the Christmas Holidays and the Blue Ribbon Campaignduring National Police Week each May.
The C.O.P.S organization now consists of over 15,000 surviving families of officers killed in the line of duty according to Federal government criteria. Unfortunately, with between 140 and 160 law enforcement officers dying in the line of duty each year, C.O.P.S' membership continues to grow.
