Of all the ways we say goodbye, at the end of any person's brief turn across the mortal stage, few are as elaborate and meaningful as the funeral for a police officer killed in the line of duty.
In Newmarket yesterday, the sad spectacle was again played out, this time for Det. Const. Rob Plunkett, a husband, a 43-year-old father of three, a 22-year veteran of the York Region force, a cop who lost his life last week while trying to arrest a suspected thief.
When one among them falls, cops come out in support, said York Chief Armand La Barge. Just as it's always been. And just as it should be. As ever, there were the sombre rituals of the law-enforcement tribe – the gathering of uniformed officers in their thousands from across the continent, the pipes and drums of police bands, the processions, the tears, the last salutes. By the simple rules of arithmetic, it was just one life, an equal to any other, no more or less painful to those who loved him than the loss of, say, a butcher or pipefitter.
In a way, the death of a police officer should even be less startling, working as they do in harm's way, than in other lines of work.
But it isn't. It always shocks.
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