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municating with partners on the street and talking with veteran officers back at the station offer valuable insight based on ex- perience.
“Do what you are trained to do, like (Gary and Marmolejo) were doing. Maybe we can do more teaching about trains if we have to go up (the tracks),” 5th District Officer Eric Wright com- mented. “People were saying, ‘Why would you chase somebody on train tracks?’ We have to chase them where they run. We don’t get that choice. We don’t make that determination, but we have to find ways to do it that make it safer for us.”
Jason Arellano, an officer in the vice patrol section of orga- nized crime, added: “The Department is doing a good job trying to implement more safety. My hat’s off to them for doing that. We can preach tactics all day long, but at the end of the day, it’s one of those jobs like the military where you can do everything right and still get hurt.”
That sticks with officers like 20-year veteran Ricardo Gonza- lez, who worked with Bauer in the gang unit and is a native of the same Back of the Yards neighborhood as Marmolejo. As he sat in the church foyer looking for familiar faces from the com- munity among mourners attending Marmolejo’s funeral, Gon- zalez acknowledged that “There’s always a little bit of survivor’s guilt...there’s always a sense that it could have been me.”
Those thoughts, mixed with the job’s inherent challenges, cause various emotions of reflection.
“We understand the dangers that come with this job and we step up to the fight. Many of us have been in situations where we have to Monday-morning quarterback ourselves – what could I have done differently,” Gonzalez added. “I always second-guess
myself a little. I just thank God it worked out for me. Sometimes it doesn’t work out for everyone.”
Chicago Lodge 7 First Vice President Pat Murray stressed that the unpredictable nature of police work means that even the best-designed safety plan can go out the window in a fast-mov- ing incident.
“Each situation is different. Sometimes you’re on the job and you just react to things. A lot of the time there is no time to be safe, you’re just reacting to the situation,” Murray said.
No one in law enforcement is immune from fearing the worst in those split-second moments — not even Illinois State Police Director Leo Schmitz, who was a longtime commander and deputy chief with the CPD.
“I’ve got thousands of people working for me. I worry about them every night the way I worry about my children when I go to bed,” Schmitz said prior to Marmolejo’s funeral.
Every line-of-duty in the state impacts the police community, Schmitz continued, which is a driving force for why his agency continually looks at ways to improve safety.
“We go over things, do after actions, just so we can do things right. If we see someone else do something right, we take it,” Schmitz noted.
Commander of Patrol Fred Waller echoed the sentiment about continuous learning because the challenges are perpet- ual.
“As we endure this again today, we ask those officers to go in the face of danger each and every day,” Waller said. “We’ll learn from this experience and we’ll get past this experience.”
On the Job, or New to the Job?
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