03 November 2014

A rosary and a medal, seven years later


Morgan Zalot has an article in the Philadelphia Daily News about a good cop remembered:
Seven years after Officer Chuck Cassidy (in poster, center) was gunned down in the line of duty, his wife, Judy, finally received a small piece of her husband, her high-school sweetheart. The memento just surfaced, unexpectedly, inside the Northwest Philadelphia police district where he spent the last eleven years of his twenty-five-year career.
It was on a shelf in 35th Police District locker number 156, which now stands as a memorial to the fallen officer inside district headquarters at Broad and Champlost.
There, a lieutenant on the anniversary of when Cassidy was fatally shot, found a small, black change holder, pants, and a uniform shirt that had somehow been overlooked when the locker was cleared of Cassidy's belongings in 2007. Inside the change holder, something more personal: a rosary and a medal of St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of police.
Captain Joe Fredericksdorf, now commander of the 35th, gave the change holder to Cassidy's wife and their three adult children during a candlelight vigil in his memory.
The ceremony was held outside a Dunkin' Donuts on Broad Street near 66th Avenue, where he was shot in the head when he interrupted a gunpoint robbery the morning of 31 October 2007. He died the next day.
Governor Corbett signed an execution warrant for Cassidy's shooter, Lewis Jordan, now 27, in April of 2014. As is common in death-penalty cases in Pennsylvania, his execution was stayed pending appeal.
The ceremony, though, was about remembering the decorated officer, whom Fredericksdorf said received numerous commendations during his long career, and is remembered daily in the district headquarters, where his portrait is painted outside and his locker still stands. "For seven years, the locker has kept a silent vigil, acting as a sentry for those preparing for work," Fredericksdorf said of the locker, which had fallen into disrepair recently when the locking assembly came loose, leading officers in the district to open it and find the rosary and medal.
"We would like to present this, along with flowers, to the Cassidy family at this time, as the most personal item of Chuck's that just resurfaced, seven years later."
About two hundred civilians, clergy, and police officers, from patrol cops to top brass, stood on Broad Street last night paying homage, despite the biting wind.
"It's overwhelming," Judy Cassidy said during the vigil, her voice faltering as she broke down, crying. "I just can't thank everybody enough for remembering."
Rico says there are good cops...

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