Friday’s Heroes: Remembering the Fallen

Sometimes I forget…or simply choose not to think about…how
dangerous this profession of law enforcement really is. I have lost
another friend, Christine Fairbanks, a U.S. Forest Service law
enforcement officer, who was killed in the line of duty yesterday
afternoon. I knew her and her husband, Brian Fairbanks, both very well
when I was an officer on the Olympic Peninsula and lived in Forks,
WA., where they still live. Brian is also a law enforcement officer
with Washington State. Chris was checking a suspicious vehicle
yesterday afternoon on a remote mountain road near Sequim in Clallam
County, WA when the driver shot and killed her. He in turn was shot
and killed later in the evening by two deputies at a convenience
store. He had apparently also killed a man in order to steal the van
he was in when Chris stopped him. After eight years of marriage my
wife is finally starting to understand why I do strange things like
take a loaded pistol and leave it on a chair hidden beneath the towels
next to the hot tub were basking in at a remote mountain cabin while
on vacation. Why my Glock 9mm is just like an American Express
Card…because I never leave home without it. Yet still, with all the
precautions officers take, both on and off duty, this incident only
goes to prove that we can never be cautious enough. In her career
Chris made thousands of contacts like this with motorists, many of
which probably seemed at the time to be potentially more dangerous
than this one. But this man managed to take her by surprise, to shoot
first, and so now she is dead. The reason she stopped the van was
because it had no rear license plate; the suspect had obviously taken
it off because he had just killed the van’s owner. I would never have
approached that van alone, and if circumstances had forced me to, I
would have had my Glock out of the holster, gripped in both hands and
ready to fire. But I don’t want to second guess her, maybe she did
just that. Maybe the guy emerged from cover outside the van and
ambushed her, or shot her through a rear window as she approached.
Thank God for the two Clallam County Deputies who crossed paths with
this psychopath, had the courage to stand their ground and exchange
gunfire with him, and killed him.