It’s the part we don’t hear splashed all over the national media.

I will never forget the day, almost 8 years ago, when I was sitting with a group of mothers whose sons were all Police Officers who had been killed in the line duty the year before.  I was there because my son, David Glasser, was one of them.  This was the Concerns of Police Survivors ( C.O.P.S) session for mothers during Police Week 2017 in Washington, DC.

Each mother told her story.

It was excruciating to listen to all of their stories, especially because I shared this nightmare with them.

So much pain. So much grief. So much loss.

Too many stories about how evil won the battle.

But…through these stories….a big bold light of heroism shone through.

One son stepped in front of a gun in order to save the life of the innocent person behind him.  He literally took the bullet for a person he didn’t know.  He died.  The other person lived.

Another son drove his police car in front of a speeding vehicle to save the people in the car beside him. The police car took the hit, killing the policeman. But his act of heroism saved the lives of all of the innocent people in the car.

Have you heard these stories leading the way on all of our national media channels for several nights in a row going over the details again and again?

No?

I haven’t either.

We hear about the small minority of bad cop situations repeated over and over but we don’t hear any of the details of the daily stories of bravery and heroism of our police officers.

What does that tell us?  It means that the news is not telling us what’s really going on.  Reading and listening to the news doesn’t mean we’re well-informed.  The media tells us what they want to tell us.  They emphasize what they want to emphasize.  The more sensational the news is – especially about cops – the more viewers they get.  And sadly, people believe this unbalanced, one-sided source.

Some of the local channels try to strike a balance and they do pretty well.  They get details wrong but they try to present a more well-rounded picture.

The national media doesn’t even try.   They’ve taken over for the tabloids with a bunch of sensationalized scandals with he-saids and she-saids.  The more controversial and skewed the better for them because it means more viewers.

The amount of fake news swirling around is astounding. There has been an overall loss of the value of truth in our culture. People are making up their own news, exaggerating and falsifying events. Now with AI, there is a growing amount of pictures and videos being used like they truly happened. Don’t believe anything that you see.

The truth is – most of the bravery and heroism shown by our Police Officers doesn’t ever make it on any news channel.  If it was all covered it, there would be stories EVERY DAY on the news.

There’s also another reason why we don’t hear a lot of these stories of heroism.

If you talk to a police officer, they will say it was ‘just part of my job’.

Just part of the job – sacrificing themselves to save others.

There is so much more to this story that we will never hear, more than the public will ever know. The real news.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.