STRONG RESPONSE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31
Jersey came with bagels. I just figured everybody did
this,” he explained.
As the crew set out, Colligan actually found a harbinger of things to come. The PBA delegation was set
to stay at the Omni Hotel, centrally located near the
actual crime scene and with access to where the funerals would eventually be held. Based on the initial
room rate Omni offered, the bill would have come in
at nearly $11,000. But Mr. President got on the phone
with a manager, and Omni lowered its room rate from
$399 to $125 per night. The hotel also gave the PBA pallets of water and all the ice needed to keep cops cool at
all the funerals.
The road trip to Dallas with the trailer provided another
sign of the times. Hulse and Haase said they were escorted
by drivers honking their horns when they saw the trailer
and passing with a thumbs up. When they stopped for gas,
unknown people would get out of their cars to express
their thanks, not even knowing they were headed to Texas.
The flight to Dallas was a
bit more stoic. Werner confided being nervous and having
memories of 9-11. Hammond
admitted there was some
concern.
“Everybody was saying
watch your back and don’t
wear any clothes marked as
police or Special Olympics
Torch Run,” she said. “Most of
our wardrobe has some kind
of emblem. So the emotions
were so high. You didn’t expect to be a target. You wanted to
stand up for what
you believe in, but
you didn’t want
anybody else to get
hurt.”
Upon landing,
the PBA reps connected with some
Dallas officers who
up to us, hugging us and thanking
us for doing the job we do,” Dello
continued. “People were so overwhelmingly nice. Whenever we
went to buy a cup of coffee, people bought it for us. You wouldn’t
believe the brotherhood.”
The trailer arrived around 2
a.m. on July 13, and Hulse and
Haase were up at 6 a.m. preparing
for the first funeral. They slept about
that much each night, and Dello made
it a point to note the superhuman efforts his
t w o
brothers
put
in
with the
#BatonRougeStrong
100-plus-degree temperature making the
inside of the trailer like
working in an oven. Still,
the coffee, the water, the
snacks and the brotherhood were there in mass
quantities throughout
the four funerals the PBA
attended.
“This is what we do,”
Hulse said. “It took us a
bit longer to get there
than we usually have
to travel, but it’s something we should do: support that community that was
really hurting because some of their best people were
taken away.”
Responsibilities
#DallasStrong
related what
the scene
was like
when the shootings took place.
“They told us it was like a massacre,”
Dello related. “They said that during
the shootout, a couple of officers were
running for cover and people in the crowd
were yelling at them, ‘How does it feel?’”
But when they finally got into town…
“Whatever ethnicity, people were coming
32
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ AUGUST 2016
So many sites, sounds and scenes capture the impact
of the PBA response to these mass tragedies, but perhaps none better than this:
When the first funeral ended on Wednesday, the trailer team was thick into distributing ice-bucket-cold water
to the hundreds, maybe even thousands of officers who
attended from too many states to name. Kovar witnessed
something unbelievable, and he quickly dialed up President
Colligan to relate what happened.
“He told me that there was a line of Dallas cops, and they all had
money in their hands wanting to pay for the water,” Mr. President told.
“Now, Marc is not an emotional guy, but that really touched him. That
one phone call made me realize what we did by sending our trailer
and our team.”
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