Ground-breaking news
Building starts on National Law Enforcement Officers Museum
There are thousands of museums in Washington D.C. dedicated
to natural history, air and space, art and culture, textiles and buildings. There are museums honoring every war’s soldiers from every
branch of the military. There’s even a Spy Museum, but left out in
the cold has been the 250-year-old story of America’s law enforcement officers.
Until now. Or really about 30 months from now.
In fact, ground has been broken and a gate is up around the E
Street site that will soon host the National Law Enforcement
Officers Museum. Two years from now, the building will be complete, and four months after that the doors will open to the public.
“This took 15 years to
become a reality,” expressed
Pat Montuore, the retired
Florham Park chief and the
museum’s Senior Director of
Law Enforcement Relations.
“We’ve had assistance in
repaying the $103 million
bond used to pay for the
museum, but although we
appreciate the gracious donations from citizens and corporate sponsors alike, we
need donations from law
enforcement to make this
Police Unity Tour Founder Pat Montuore, museum a reality and to susshowing a segment of the National Law tain itself.”
Enforcement Officers Memorial wall,
The “Let’s Build Our
explains how PBA members can get
House”
program – pioneered
involved in the museum at the 2016 Mini
by Montuore and Harry
Convention
Phillips, board member for
the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum – is
asking law enforcement officers to buy into the museum so that “it
can be our hallowed ground,” Montuore declared. “We want to
make it our story and our place rather than it being taken over by
the government or states or being commercialized by name branding it outside of what we want it to be.”
For contributions of $300 or more (which can be made in a onetime payment or even deducted from your paychecks), officers will
become founding members of the one-of-a-kind law enforcement
officer Mecca, with benefits that include lifetime memberships and
a listing of your name among the Thin Blue Line donors in a kiosk
in the Museum.
“We’re hoping this program will bring us to a point where law
enforcement officers won’t have to pay admission to their
museum,” Montuore predicted.
In further support of the “Let’s Build Our House” program, Montuore and Phillips attended the PBA Mini Convention with a rocksolid plus-one – a segment of the stone wall that makes up the
National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in D.C.
“It’s a representation of what the wall looks like for those PBA
members who haven’t been there, whether they’re new officers or
if they were never able to get down to D.C.,” Montuore described.
“We wanted them to see it right in front of them; to feel what we feel
every time we go down there. There are 20,538 officers on the wall,
not counting the ones we are adding this year (during Police Week).
It’s the most unbelievable feeling to be in front of it, and the only
way to get that feeling is to be in front of it and touch it.”
Since 1991, the Memorial has turned Judiciary Square into the
Capital’s law enforcement neighborhood. And when the National
An artist’s illustration shows what visitors will see when entering the museum’s
interior concourse.
Law Enforcement Officers Museum moves into the neighborhood,
it will be an opportunity for the public to honor not only those officers who lost their lives in the line of duty, but also those who have
and continue to serve valiantly for the length of America’s law
enforcement history.
“In the future, your grandchildren’s grandchildren will be able to
go in there and understand who you are and what we are,” Montuore asserted. “And that’s what it’s all about.”
For more information, logon to www.upholdtheline.com.
www.njcopsmagazine.com
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APRIL 2016
61