Thursday, January 10, 2008 Seares: Dead cops and medals By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
I DON'T know how region police chief Ronald Roderos felt when he awarded a medal to the widow of a slain policeman.
The other day, the chief pinned a medal on Charlene Sucion, wife of SPO1 Pedro Sucion who was killed while on patrol after a robbery alarm in Mandaue City last Sunday.
His buddy, PO2 Darius Conejos, also got a medal and he received it himself since he was only injured in the hail of gunfire from the bad guys.
Simple folk like the Sucions, as in most families, depend on the father to put food on the table. A medal means no more than a scrap of metal his heirs will put away in a box with the dead man's photos.
It won't bring back the breadwinner, an absurd and unfair thought, yet relevant.
Titles
They can't hock the medal to pay rent or tuition. Although Sucion's Medalya ng Kadakilaan and Conejos' Medalya ng Sugatang Magiting tout greatness, the titles don't rate in pawnshops.
How can one tell a grieving family, whose world collapsed with the death of its breadwinner, that the medal symbolizes heroism?
So one can bond with chief Ronald who must be ill at ease with rituals like pinning the medal on a widow still gripped with pain of loss and fear of tomorrow. Cash in the envelope that went with the medal helped but for how much and how long?
Still, medals are part of police and military symbols as they are, in whatever form of reward, in the rest of society.
What must disturb us is that a cop or soldier usually needs to die or be wounded to get the medal. It matters little that he is killed or maimed because he is poorly equipped and not trained well or his courage is misplaced.
