'Officer Down' site a sad reminder of painful loss
1,060.
That's how many police officers in Illinois died in the line of duty, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a volunteer-driven website that lists casualties dating back to 1791.
The most recent entry is Fox Lake police Lt. Charles J. Gliniewicz. End of watch: Sept. 1, 2015, the website reads.
As we editors discussed stories to pursue the day after Gliniewicz's murder, some of us recalled cop-on-duty deaths in the suburbs, thankfully rare. But the veterans among us vividly remember the Nov. 5, 1985, fatal shooting of Wheeling patrol officer Kenneth R. Dawson, 42, who was responding to a burglary call. The murder occurred on Election Night, a night when it's all hands on deck to cover the plethora of races in our midst. It's also the time when, because of the volume of stories, the newspaper is as preplanned as you can imagine: specific election stories with specific lengths are dummied weeks ahead of time. That night, all the advance planning went out the window; an officer's murder was a huge deal.
I remembered well, too, the April 20, 1992, death of West Chicago patrol officer Michael A. Browning. Only five months on the force, he was run down by a man attempting to steal a car from the showroom of an auto dealership. I will always remember Browning's police photo; he looked a half dozen years younger than his age, 23. So, I suggested to the editors group, how about something on the suburban cops who have died on duty? It didn't take long to realize this could be a daunting, and space-consuming, task. If we wanted to recount the number of officers who have died on duty in the suburbs — ever — the list would encompass about 80. If we narrowed it down to just our print circulation area, it would be about 40. We decided to include just the past 30 years.
I combed the Officer Down site for the communities we cover, and put together a list of 12, which serve as a reminder of the stress that goes into the job: many died from heart attacks. In the haste of deadline, I forgot to check the list of state troopers who died on duty. This was pointed out to us the next day, so I added three more names, including one I should have remembered: John H. Kugelman, 27.
His 1986 death involved a dramatic, high-speed chase across several suburbs. Leading it was a 17-year-old on the lam from a parole violation. By the time he hit southbound Route 53 at Irving Park Road near Itasca, police were waiting. Kugelman stood on the shoulder of the highway and pointed his gun at the motorist, who, according to testimony at his murder trial, didn't let his foot off the gas as he ran down the trooper.
Kugelman's killer was convicted in 1987, and sentenced to 32 years in prison. Later, his case was cited — by Kugelman's father — as a compelling reason for passage of “Andrea's Law.” Named after Andrea Will, an Eastern Illinois University student murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1998, who was released from prison after serving half his 24-year sentence, the law requires paroled murderers to have their mug shots and addresses posted in a state database. The point, Bill Kugelman said in his letter to then-Gov. Pat Quinn, was to “not only keep track of these predators, but to have them reminded, for every day of their lives, what they had done.”
John Kugelman's killer was paroled in 2002.
jdavis@dailyherald.com