HUNDREDS HONOR FALLEN 'HERO'
There were 300 at the funeral.
Police officers from two states were in attendance. A pair of fire department aerial trucks were outside, their ladders several stories high, a giant American flag stretched between them.
A color guard bearing the flag of the United States solemnly marched in. There was a somber, heartsick air. It was full police honors.
The mayor stood to speak.
“We,” she said, “have lost a hero.”
Which is enough to make you cry. And it did make some cry. But it shouldn’t have. Because it wasn’t a hero that was lost.
It was a dog.
A police dog, yes. But a dog nonetheless.
And this scene from last Saturday in Midvale, Utah, is not a demonstration of the vaunted brotherhood of law enforcement, it is an example of how our appetite for maudlin sentimentality has crept even into the ranks of the police.
In our national desire to have an Oprah moment, to get in touch with our feelings and share our pain, we have sissified and confused our culture.
Like this funeral.
First of all, dogs don’t have funerals.
At least not at taxpayers’ expense. And certainly they are not turned into odd spectacles that leave the public unsure whether it is supposed to cry or laugh.
Certainly, dogs are wonderful creatures. As working animals – like a police dog – they are tremendously useful. As companion animals – like the pets most of us have at home – they are part of our families.
We love our dogs, and when we lose them, we mourn them with all our hearts. But untold numbers of dogs die every day. Some are hit by cars or killed by disease. Some just get old and die. And we are very sad when they do.
But we don’t reserve the high school auditorium and hire bagpipers to memorialize them.
Here’s the background.
A week and a half ago, on a Friday night, a burglary suspect – a 22-year-old guy -- ran from the cops. As he was getting away, a young police dog named Koda was turned loose by his Midvale Police Department handler. The dog closed on the bad guy and was about to bite him when the bad guy supposedly turned and shot the dog twice.
Then the 22-year-old was shot in the head by police.
Both died.
The 22-year-old’s funeral didn’t make the news. But the dog’s did.
And it was out of proportion.
Yes, the killing of a police dog is a bad thing and a crime. It is to be regretted and mourned.
But a police dog is not a police officer. And the fact you put a badge on a dog’s harness does not do anything to fundamentally change that dog’s status. And to pretend that the killing of this poor dog is some great emotional loss to the community or to the law-enforcement fraternity is bogus.
I don’t minimize the loss of this service animal, but neither do I romanticize it and blow it out of proportion.
Like the mayor did.
Contrary to what she said, an animal, in fact, cannot be a hero. Heroism requires moral courage and animals are not moral beings. They can be angry, and they can be brave, but they essentially act based on their training and instinct.
In this instance, this dog was acting as it had been trained. Running down and biting a guy is what the dog was trained to do, much as other dogs are trained to catch Frisbees or herd sheep or retrieve ducks. Obedience to a trained command is not an act of heroism.
And the too free use of the word “hero” profanes it and diminishes it. In our society, we so overuse the word “hero,” that on those rare occasions when a true hero presents himself we are less able to appropriately honor him. We have so diluted the meaning of the word that we call every good deed an act of heroism and every one who does his duty a hero.
Even a dog.
And that’s not right.
Neither is it right to give to a dog those honors which we typically reserve for our military dead.
A color guard, bearing the flag of the United States of America, is a sacred demonstration of respect and patriotism. Men and women have given their lives on foreign battlefields and received that honor. To afford the same respect to a dog is disrespectful to the flag and to the people who have died to keep it flying.
Nowhere in the U.S. Flag Code is there authorization to display the American flag to honor an animal.
And no thinking person could believe that the two fire trucks out front, draping the giant American flag, was appropriate. If you took a picture of that flag fluttering between those aerial ladders and showed it to 100 people, all of them would assume that the display was meant to honor a servicemember who had died in the war.
But it wasn’t.
It was a garish, over-the-top spectacle in celebration of a dog.
And it degraded the symbols and rituals which rightly belong to men and women who have laid down their lives in the service of our country and community.
The horrible fact is that Utah servicemembers have died in the war and received less pomp and pageantry than did this police dog.
And that is shameful.
And the next time a son or daughter of Utah dies in the service of the United States, and the color guard marches and the fire trucks hoist the giant flag, let’s hope that the grieving family isn’t haunted by the fact that their loved one is getting the same funeral as a dog.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
