The will to
heal
Essex County Sheriff’s
Officer Kennedy Murray
finds a road to recovery
that can help all wounded officers
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
The wounds can be healed. If there is a will, there can be a way,
and the NJ State PBA has offered its will. When it comes to the wellbeing of its members and law enforcement officers in general, the
PBA’s will has moved mountains in the past.
So the wounds can be healed. Working
with the magical healing powers that come
from Cop2Cop and the guidance of its
unwavering director, Cherie Castellano, the
PBA has pledged to make better the lives of
officers wounded on the job, forced to miss
lengthy periods of work or retire prematurely
due to injury and seemingly forgotten by
LODW their brothers and sisters.
The stories
NJ State PBA President Pat Colligan
of wounded announced at the March Mini-Convention
officers
plans to launch a campaign to identify,
remember and celebrate Line of Duty Woundings (LODW). The
plans for this are still coming together, but if the PBA has its way, the
campaign could very well include a version of the Officer Down
Memorial Page, the website that remembers officers killed in the
line of duty. The LODW should be equally ceremoniously remembered.
Yes, the wounds can be healed, and there can be happy endings.
And this, the first of an ongoing series of stories to spotlight LODWs,
presents an officer who was wounded, nearly died, made it back to
work and lives on, albeit in pain, to tell about the experience and
what colleagues can learn from it.
Help Wounded Officers
Join the PBA campaign to identify and honor officers
wounded in the line of duty.
Keep an eye on these pages for more information
in the coming months.
Some of you might know Retired Essex County Sheriff’s Officers
Local 183 member Kennedy Murray. He worked in the Detective’s
Bureau serving warrants for burglary, assault, robbery, homicides
and multiple-drug offenders. He chased and brought back
fugitives, some from as far away as Virginia.
About 17 years into the job, Murray was assigned to the U.S. Marshal’s Regional Task Force, and in the before-dawn hours on July 2,
2004, the team planned a raid to apprehend a suspect who had shot
and killed a bystander in Jersey City. The perpetrator was hiding out
in a section of Newark not far from where Murray gr