Members of law enforcement organizations across Juneau came together at Evergreen Cemetery on Friday afternoon in honor of Peace Officers Memorial Day, recognizing law enforcement officers killed on duty.<\/p>\n
Dozens of law enforcement personnel stood in formation for wreath layings and benedictions by the Rev. Gordon Blue of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church while a crowd looked on.<\/p>\n
“It’s an honor to be here today to show all our support to our law enforcement brothers and sisters who made the ultimate sacrifice,” said Juneau Police Department Chief Ed Mercer. “It’s a testament to our profession that we follow through with this every year to show our support for our fallen officer and support for our current officer.”<\/p>\n
Wreaths were laid at the graves of Officer Richard Adair, who was killed alongside Officer Jimmy Kennedy while responding to a call in 1979. Adair-Kennedy Memorial Park in the Mendenhall Valley is named in their honor. Adair had spent a decade as part of JPD, while Kennedy, a Navy veteran, was coming up on two years in the department, the Empire previously reported. The two were killed by a man experiencing a mental health crisis, who shot and injured a neighbor and killed both officers before dying by suicide. <\/p>\n
Officers also laid a wreath at the grave of Chief of Detectives Donald T. Dull, the first law enforcement officer to be killed in Juneau.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at (757) 621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ceremony was held for Peace Officers Memorial Day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":85863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[384,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-85862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-law-enforcement","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85862"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=85862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}