Nov 15, 2016 3 min read

Most of us can head off to our jobs day after day with a reasonable assurance that we will make it back home OK.

Sure, there’s always the possibility that we could meet with an unexpected end through an accident or a sudden medical emergency. That’s a reality that most of us keep well in the back of our minds. To be continually conscious of it would be paralyzing.

But most jobs don’t involve putting our lives on the line, or feeling a clammy sense of dread about what might be behind a locked door when responding to an emergency call.

We don’t have to worry if we’ll be harmed as a result of someone’s unmanageable anger or ungovernable delusions. We don’t have to witness people in severe distress, help pull people from twisted wreckage or be the object of abuse from a lead-foot driver who was traveling 25 miles over the speed limit.

Those are things that police confront every day.

Last week, as most people who read this newspaper know, a Canonsburg police officer made the ultmate sacrifice in the course of his duties. Scott Bashioum, a 52-year-old husband, father of four, volunteer firefighter and veteran of Canonsburg’s police force, was ambushed and killed when responding to a domestic dispute in the middle of the night.

Another officer was wounded, and the gunman went on to kill his pregnant wife then take his own life.

Bashioum will be laid to rest today at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies.

Jim Hovrath, chief of the Chartiers Township Police Department, told the Observer-Reporter last week that Bashioum “was one of those guys that you like to be around.”

Bashioum is one of more than 50 law-enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty in 2016.

The week before Bashioum was killed, two officers in Des Moines, Iowa, were ambushed and shot to death. In August, a 65-year-old sheriff’s deputy in Arkansas who was about to retire was shot and killed by a rifle-wielding suspect wearing body armor. A 28-year-old South Carolina officer was killed by a 17-year-old boy.

Five policemen were killed in Dallas in July during a protest organized by the Black Lives Matter movement.

While Black Lives Matter has focused attention on police shootings and whether minorities have been disproportionately targeted, the discussion has too often degenerated into name-calling and broad-brush characterizations. Some on the loonier reaches of the far left continue to drag out mindless, hyperbolic stereotypes straight from the 1960s of the police being thugs, an alien force, or “oppressors” marshaled by patriarchs, oligarchs, The Man, whoever.

This elides the fact that the overwhelming majority of police do a grueling, frequently thankless job with a great deal of skill, empathy and concern for the public they serve.

Thousands of police officers should not be defined or judged by the actions of a few bad apples.

Bashioum deserves the accolades he will receive today.

Other police officers like him, who uphold our laws and keep us safe, also deserve our gratitude.