Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images
President Joe Biden and the first lady Jill Biden attended a memorial service Saturday at the United States Capitol for honor law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2019 and 2019 .
The White House also issued a proclamation ordering flags to fly at half-mast in public buildings on Saturday.
The Officers’ Memorial Service Peace Nationals began in 1982 as a small gathering in Senate Park in Washington DC of approximately 120 survivors and law enforcement supporters.
The annual commemorative event is part of National Police Week, organized by groups including the Fraternal Order of Police, which attracts tens of thousands of law enforcement officers and other attendees to the capital each year.
“It’s like losing a piece of your soul,” said Biden at the 40 º National Peace Officers Memorial Service on Saturday. “Some of you still have that feeling like you’ve been sucked into a black hole in your chest, wondering, ‘Oh my God, will it ever change?’”
Biden also specifically recognized the role of the police in responding to the attack on the U.S. Capitol January 6, by supporters of former president Donald Trump .
“Here, nine months ago, your brothers and sisters thwarted an unconstitutional and fundamentally non-American attack on the values of a nation and our votes,” he said Biden . “Thanks to you, democracy survived.”
“Being a police officer today is much more difficult than ever before,” he said Biden , by ensuring that the population “expects everything” from its security agents, and reaching that threshold is “beyond capacity of anyone. ”
The president recalled that 2020 “It was the deadliest year on record” for the police, and that this has taken a “too hard” bill on the profession.
“If we do not change the environment in which the work is done, we will have difficulties recruiting enough men and women who want to do the job, ”he warned.
Biden did not mention the controversies related to racism and police brutality that last year generated a unprecedented wave of protests s, after the death by suffocation of the African American George Floyd under the knee of a policeman.
Biden has endorsed a bill aimed at reforming the United States Police departments, that would ban the tactics that caused Floyd’s death and would facilitate lawsuits against those agents who unjustly injure or kill citizens.
The Democratic majority of the House of Representatives approved in early March a law with that objective named after George Floyd, but negotiations in the Senate on that issue failed in September, and the matter is stuck .
With information from agencies