[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6500-6501]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NATIONAL POLICE WEEK


    Honoring Deputy Sheriff Matthew Chism and Officer Eddie Johnson

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, all across the country right now people are 
honoring the men and women who serve in law enforcement as we honor 
National Police Week. I was the cochair of the Senate Law Enforcement 
Caucus. Senator Coons and I founded that caucus when we came to the 
Senate a little over 4 years ago. I am proud to be able to speak on 
behalf of those who serve and their families.
  I just had a meeting with the Federal Law Enforcement Association to 
talk about the challenge of these jobs and the challenge to families 
and the importance of understanding the moment you are in. One of the 
observations I made to them--going back to some legislation I worked on 
a few years ago to allow police officers to carry their weapons when 
they went from State to State--is that you may not remember everybody 
that you arrested, but everybody you arrested remembers you.
  The vulnerability of police and their families is sometimes equal to 
and sometimes exceeds the vulnerability of those of us whom the police, 
every day, step up to protect. This is a week when we really take a 
moment to recognize that. We take a moment to recognize those who 
serve. I want to pay tribute today particularly to two Missouri 
officers who were killed in the line of duty last year: Deputy Sheriff 
Matthew Chism of the Cedar County Sheriff's Office and Officer Eddie 
Johnson of the Alton Police Department.
  Deputy Sheriff Chism, of Stockton, MO, was tragically killed in 
November of last year. He was 25 years old. Deputy Sheriff Chism was 
shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop. He had served with the 
Cedar County Sheriff's Office for just under 2 years. Deputy Sheriff 
Chism is survived by his wife and his young son. Clearly, that family 
has paid a tremendous price for the willingness of their husband and 
father to step up and defend us.
  Officer Eddie Johnson, Jr., of Alton, MO, was involved in a fatal 
vehicle crash while responding to a structure fire on October 20 of 
last year. In addition to being an officer with the Alton Police 
Department, Officer Johnson also served as the fire chief of the 
volunteer fire department and as a reserve deputy for the Oregon County 
Sheriff's Department. He was 45 years old. He is survived by his wife 
and their three children.
  So difficult things happen to those who serve. We saw two of our 
officers, the St. Louis County police officers at Ferguson, MO, who 
were shot recently as someone was shooting into a crowd there 
expressing concern about police activity. But the very people trying to 
be sure that the crowd was able to express that concern were then the 
victims of violence that has not yet been really figured out--why the 
person who fired those shots was shooting at a crowd, whether he was 
shooting specifically at police in that crowd or just shooting into the 
crowd or what that person was doing.
  The desire of people who serve and put on that uniform every day is 
to serve and protect. That is their No. 1 goal, I am confident, in 
virtually every case in taking that job. The No. 1 hope of their family 
is that those people come home safely at the end of their shift. You 
know, life is uncertain in many ways, but more uncertain when you 
actually decide you are going to pursue a service to others that puts 
you intentionally in harm's way--people who are not only prepared to 
serve but willing to serve, prepared to stand in the way of danger to 
others but willing to stand in the way of danger to others. It is a 
determination of what to do that other people don't make and don't bear 
the responsibility the same way. So it is important for us right now to 
think about those who serve.
  I was glad to join Senator Cardin as a cosponsor, with others, of the 
National Blue Alert Act--the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue 
Alert Act. This bill created a national alert system to apprehend 
violent criminals who have seriously injured or killed police officers. 
These two officers were killed while in their squad car. This alert 
system would be used to quickly get that information to other police 
agencies and to the public, as they are trying to find someone who 
would think about doing that sort of thing.
  We passed that bill on April 30. The House of Representatives passed 
it yesterday. It is now on the way to the President's desk. It is a 
good thing for us to step up and be willing to do. This is a job where 
you go to work every day not knowing what is likely to happen that day. 
We saw events in my home State, in Ferguson, MO, last August that 
brought attention to the danger that police face.
  I heard even the President talking about Baltimore just a few days 
ago. He made the comment that we have difficulty in communities and 
difficulty in people's lives--people who are not prepared for 
opportunities and they do not get opportunities. The President said 
something like this: And then we send the police into those 
environments, and we act surprised when bad things happen, when 
unfortunate things happen, when violence occurs, when police are in the 
middle of a situation that suddenly does not work out the way any of us 
would want it to.
  Police are dealing with major problems. I cosponsored with Senator 
Stabenow last year the Excellence in Mental Health Act, trying to be 
sure that we are dealing with people's behavioral health problems like 
we deal with all other physical health problems. One out of four adult 
Americans has a behavioral health problem that is diagnosable--
according to the NIH, almost always treatable--and then one out of nine 
has a behavioral health problem that severely impacts how they function 
as an individual, according to the National Institutes of Health.
  We have no greater support of that effort to try to begin to try to 
treat behavioral health like all other health than the police 
organizations around the country that stepped forward and

[[Page 6501]]

have said: This is a problem that we deal with all the time, and there 
are better ways to deal with it than expecting police officers to deal 
with someone whose behavioral health problem leads them to violence or 
into another situation.
  By the way, people with behavioral health problems are more often the 
victims of violence than they are the perpetrators of violence. So 
often this is part of what we ask police to respond to. We expect 
police to be psychiatrists and psychologists and first responders and 
experts at protecting others. Then, we can easily begin to want to 
question what equipment they used, what uniform they were told they 
needed to have on for the exercise that they were about to participate 
in, the public safety moment they were about to be part of.
  These are hard jobs. They are difficult jobs that often come into the 
moment of difficulty in other people's lives--people who for whatever 
reason do something that they would normally not do, react in a way 
that they might normally not react or react out of incredible 
frustration because of the situation they found themselves in. But we 
expect the police to step forward and immediately be able to respond to 
that situation in a way that protects others. Does every police officer 
do the right thing every time? Probably not. Does almost every police 
officer do their very best to do the right thing ever time? Absolutely, 
they do. It is the exceptions that get attention, as they should. But 
for those of us who every day benefit and benefit in this building from 
the work they do--I remember on 9/11. One of my memories of 9/11 is 
that I am one of the last people to leave the Capitol Building and the 
police officer who is there telling me to get out as quickly as I 
could. As she says that to me, I realize, as I am leaving the door to 
try to get to a safer place, she--the police officer who says that I 
need to get out of here right now--is still standing at the place where 
she told me: You need to get out of here right now. Whoever else might 
have been left in the building, she was trying to be sure that they got 
out of the building, too.
  That is what we expect the police to do. That is what their families 
know every day when they go to work, that they may be called on to do 
extraordinary things. For those who serve, we are grateful. This is an 
important week to be grateful to police officers whom we see and police 
who are helping us whom we do not see. So I am pleased to be here to 
thank them for their service.

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