Just a reminder ... New Year's Day is not over for everyone ...

[eppur_se_muova]

Funeral Monday for officer killed in hit-and-run incident

January 4, 2008

The funeral for Courtney G. Brooks, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer who died New Year's Day after being hit by a vehicle, will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, 5200 N. Charles St.

Viewings will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday at Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Home, 8728 Liberty Road in Randallstown.

Brooks was struck by a hit-and-run driver New Year's Eve while he worked a traffic detail on Interstate 95 where it meets I-395. Police said a green Ford Explorer with front-end damage was seen leaving the scene.
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The officer and his fiancee, Susan G. Geisler, had bought a two-story house in Hampstead.

He had one child from a previous marriage and two with Geisler.
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more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.officer04jan04,0,46321.story

For his family and friends, New Year's will be hard to deal with for a long time to come.

Part of the cost of maintaining a civilized society is that, just as we ask soldiers to risk their lives in battle on our behalf, so too we ask police and emergency workers to place their own safety, and even lives, at risk for the greater good, for fairly small reward. The misbehavior of a few in our society makes New Year's Eve/Day an especially dangerous work shift for its most responsible members. Maryland lost "only" one officer this year.

Abuse of police authority frequently gets called out on this board, and rightly so. Just try to keep in mind that for every "thug with a badge", there's a whole bunch of regular Joes out there trying to do right, and a whole bunch of spouses who worry that they'll be the next to be widowed by a drunken driver, road rager, or gun-wielding gangsta wannabe.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Looks like New Year's Day most certainly IS over.