Fallen officers honored at ceremony

Area police officers honored 18 fellow officers Friday.The 18 served law enforcement in Southeast Missouri at one point and died in the line the duty either here or elsewhere.

The annual Law Enforcement Memorial Service took place at the conservation center at Cape County Park North. Nearly 200 people attended, including police and sheriffs from Bollinger, Stoddard, Scott and Cape Girardeau counties.

"Almost anyone on the street can give you the name of a serial killer but can't of the people that fell victim to criminals and gave their life in the line of duty. They're the ones that should be remembered," said Cape Girardeau police Capt. Roger Fields. Fields is the chairman of Seniors and Lawmen Together, the group that sponsored the event.

This year, SALT made a concerted attempt to contact all the families who lost loved ones. The families present at the event were honored and given a white rose during the memorial.

The record of the dead goes all the way back to Jimmy Carr of the Scott County Sheriff's Department, who died in the line of duty in 1875, to the most recent, John Sampiero Jr. of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who died in the line of duty in late 2005.

Kathleen Riggs-Ruopp

"Any police officer who is in this profession knows it's an assumed risk. It can happen," Fields said. "By law, the only person who can stand in the fight are police officers, and they're expected to."

Kathleen Riggs-Ruopp of Jackson was widowed when her husband, Timothy J. Ruopp, was shot and killed in the line of duty in 1984. He was an assistant jail administrator for Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department before moving to San Diego and becoming a police officer there.

"The empty space at the table will never again be filled with that loved one," Riggs-Ruopp said during a speech Friday. Her brother was killed in the line of duty six months after her husband.

Riggs-Ruopp said her husband was an ordained minister, a musician and a spiritual and family-oriented man. "When he was off work, he was on the floor playing with the kids," she said.

Edna Cross of Jackson was also present during the memorial, in honor of her nephew, Dewayne Graham Jr. of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was gunned down in front of his house in Van Buren, Mo., as he arrived home from work in early 2005.

"Every day ... every day he's on my mind," Cross said. Graham once told his family, she said, that if he dies on duty, it'll be while he's doing what he loves.

"I saw those law officers today, and I just wanted to reach and hug every one of them," Cross said. "Their life is on the line every day, and a lot of the time we take it for granted."

According to The Officer Down Memorial Page Inc., a not-for-profit organization dedicated to honoring America's fallen law enforcement officers, 63 officers have been killed in the line of duty in the United States this year. In 2006, there were 146 deaths.

tkrakowiak@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137