Miller – the essence of good
NEW CITY – It was a somber scene outside of the Rockland County Courthouse in New City on Sunday as police officers, veterans, and bereaved community members assembled to commemorate “National Police Week.”
The annual ceremony honors police officers who were killed in the line of duty and retired officers who passed due to injuries or illness sustained during their careers.
John Miller, the NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counter-terrorism said there may be shades of gray with the run of the mill criminal act, but not so with terrorism.
“Terrorism is when somebody wakes up in that morning and says, ‘I’m going to go kill perfect strangers, people I don’t know, for something those individual people have nothing to do with, and I am going to do that purposefully’, that is the essence of evil,” Miller said. And the essence of good is the law enforcement men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the public, he said.
Rockland County Executive Edwin Day, a veteran of the NYPD and the Baltimore Police Department, said the police “have been, and will always be, there to protect us, even at the cost of their lives. It is for these reasons we take pause to remember and honor those who have given their full measure.”
Miller noted that one of the names inscribed on the granite monument of fallen officers is that of Officer Chris Lindsey, a Rockland resident and 9/11 first responder who contracted cancer as a result and died.
He was a member of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Services Unit. Lindsey and his wife, Maureen, served together with the NYPD.
