21 New Plaques Honor Fallen Heroes Outside Phila. FOP Headquarters
By Steve Tawa
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Twenty-one additional fallen police officers now have a final place of honor, as plaques in their names were dedicated today outside FOP headquarters in Northeast Philadelphia.
The Hero Plaques include 19 officers whose "End of Watch" happened on the streets of Philadelphia between 1828 and 1908. Two others were for officers who died more recently.
Indicative of how they put their lives on the line, 12 of 19 had been shot and killed.
As the FOP's Bob Ballentine read aloud the names and the circumstances of how the officers lost their lives, red roses were placed on each of the plaques.
"Officer Louis Lare," Ballentine said. "Date of death, 1872. Patrolman Lare was on foot patrol when he came upon two men who he directed to leave a corner. One of the men shot and killed him."
Others lost their lives while trying to quell riots and were beaten, run over by horse-drawn carriages or trolleys, or hit by a thrown paving stone. And in one case an officer died of sunstroke while patrolling the Centennial celebration, outside Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, in 1876.
Joining this latest round of hero plaques are two new ones for officers killed in the line of duty in the 1970s. Officer David Sampson was hit by a vehicle in 1973 while tending to a driver in a stalled car on Woodhaven Road. (The FOP said locating a plaque on the highway was unacceptable.)
Sampson's granddaughter, 12-year-old Delaney Lindberg (top photo), was among those who placed red roses on their family plaques.
And the plaque placed for Officer James Ramp, who was shot and killed during the first MOVE confrontation in 1978, was relocated from the FOP's former location on Spring Garden Street to the new FOP headquarters.
