I sit at my desk, writing this while wearing a new blue T-shirt. On it the words “Stay Strong” are underneath the insignia of the Park Forest Police Department.
Above both are the numerals 204. That is police officer Tim Jones’s badge number.
I never met the 24-year-old rookie officer who is the son of the Country Club Hills police chief. Last December, however, I wrote that Jones won a beard growing contest put on by the department. The entry fee was a donation to benefit breast cancer research. We ran his handsome, smiling picture along with the story. That’s the same photo we saw plastered on television and in the newspapers on March 19 after Jones was shot three times when, along with other officers, he was investigating a break-in in vacant house.
It was a terrible confrontation. Those who knew the jobless 20-year-old assailant said he had a violent temper. His last angry act in life was brutal and senseless. It resulted in near-fatal injury to Jones and his own death; shot by other officers.
Those gunshots few of us heard resonated in our psyche. We linked hands emotionally and we lived up to a noble principle. We forgot our petty gripes and became a nurturing, consoling community, struggling to find answers to unspeakable questions.
Three days after the shooting, with Jones listed in critical condition, hundreds, most of whom do not know Jones, crowded into Park Forest’s St. Irenaeus Catholic Church to pray for him. When officers from various departments trooped in, they were greeted by an emotional ovation.
Last Thursday, an estimated crowd estimated at nearly 1,000, including officers from about one dozen departments, jammed their way into the Culver’s restaurant in Matteson where, for three hours, 20 percent of the cost of each food order would be donated to a fund set up to help defray expenses for the family. The family keeps a constant vigil at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn as Jones fights for his life.
That money would be added to the $60,000 raised on the on-line “gofundme” site.
As the evening wore on, the lines just got longer. At 6:30, the line stretched out the door and down the street. By 10 p.m., there were still people waiting their turn.
We were told Culver’s called Park Forest officials to suggest the event. Those T-shirts made by Rich East High School sold out in 30 minutes but are available at the Police Department at $10 a piece. The other day, the line for those shirts at the department stretched out the door to the street.
Other police departments are helping. This coming Monday, the Olympia Fields Police and the local McDonald’s will be having a similar event, with the chain donating 30 per cent to the family. Do not doubt that there will be more such events.
We live in a crazy world. We want great leaders but our politics resemble a Marx Brothers movie.
We want Congress to speak for us, but all we hear is a whine.
We want state government to help our schools, but they cannot even help themselves. We have become desensitized to gang murder and we trust our police less but we demand more protection from them.
The standard phrase is that Jones was shot “in the line of duty.”
Those are the words used by both police and the military when something bad happens to those doing what we demand of him – to keep us safe.
In a superb story in the Daily Southtown, freelance reporter Nick Swedberg quoted Deputy Police Chief Chris Mannino as saying, “If I had the ability to make a mold of[Jones] and create a police department, I would do it.”
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It is a verbal medal of honor, but one stained in blood.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist and can be reached at [email protected]