National Police Week always personal for Siler City’s chief

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SILER CITY — National Police Week, when officers lost in the line of duty are commemorated, began on Sunday. For Siler City Police Chief Mike Wagner, it’s always a time of remembrance.

Eric Sutphin — a corporal with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia and Wagner’s friend and former partner — was killed in the line of duty on Aug. 21, 2006. Suthpin was pursuing a prisoner who, the morning before, killed a security guard during an escape from a hospital.

Sutphin was shot by the suspect, William Charles Morva, when he discovered him on the Huckleberry Trail near the Virginia Tech Campus. Morva was charged and convicted and, on July 6, 2017, executed for his crimes.

Though Sutphin was no longer Wagner’s partner at the time, the shock was still palpable.

“I will never forget learning of the news,” Wagner said. “I remember the shell shock. It was very traumatic, especially for the family — [Sutphin] had young children. It changed their lives forever.”

Wagner said the impact of such losses are felt not just by an police officer’s friends and family, but also the community and on law enforcement in general. Such losses are not uncommon.

Last year in the United States, 146 police officers lost their lives in the line of duty, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. Twenty-four of the deaths were related to illnesses contracted during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. Forty-eight officers died by gunfire, 22 by auto crashes, 18 by heart attack and 14 were struck by a vehicle.

Chatham County has only one record of an officer who died in the line of duty. On Christmas Day in 1972, Patrolman Leonard Meeks of the North Carolina Highway Patrol skidded while driving on Moncure-Pittsboro Road, colliding into a tree, while responding to a call for assistance. Years later, in 2013, the bridge that crosses the Rocky River on U.S. Hwy. 64 in Siler City near Walmart, was renamed by the N.C. Dept. of Transportation in Meeks’ memory.

To honor his fellow law enforcement officers, Wagner requested and received a proclamation honoring National Police Week from Siler City Mayor John Grimes. Wagner installed a wreath and other regalia at the Siler City Police Dept on Monday for the occasion.

“It gives us a time to reflect in public about the suffering of these losses,” Wagner said. “Those people who paid the ultimate price. We should never forget.”

Wagner said that a career in law enforcement carries inherent risks and often involves “split-second decisions” that can affect the officer and their families.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time you get it right, but sometimes you get it wrong,” Wagner said. “Most people don’t realize what we do, but it’s important for the public to know and understand that we all have families and we don’t know what we’re walking into — it’s 100 percent unknown.”

In the age of COVID-19, Wagner said his officers are now taking on additional risks.

“Now with COVID, it’s even more complicated,” Wagner said. “We still have to go on these calls. It keeps a police chief up at night.”

Wagner believes that National Police Week is a way for the community to keep the families of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in their thoughts and to give those families a “voice.”

“[When we have these losses], we focus on families for a period of time, but it dissipates,” Wagner said. “As we move on those families are devastated. Their lives are changed forever.”

Casey Mann can be reached at CaseyMann@Chathamnr.com.