PPOA Board Member
Crime Analyst, LASD
jwalker@ppoa.com
Readers of this column learned early on that my monthly articles are rarely about specific PPOA or Unit 621 issues. My highly competent fellow 621 board members use their microphones/articles to update our 621 members on issues, and they do a great job. So, I use this resource to talk about issues that may not necessarily directly affect a specific group but have a more general focus.
That said, I had to change my column topic from the extremely dark topic of suicide and law enforcement to one even more tragic. I have never personally known a member of the Sheriff’s Department who was killed in the line of duty. This is, in one way, a positive statement. Extremely intense training has drastically changed the way our deputies (and sheriff’s security officers) handle themselves in the field. All you need to do is look at the detailed list on the Officer Down Memorial Page to see how many deputies have been killed in the line of duty in the “old days” versus now.
My article on suicide awareness will have to wait. Time seemed to come to a halt a few weeks ago when the news flashed from Palmdale. When you are home over the weekend, and there is a deputy-involved shooting, it always takes a bit of time to get the whole story. Television news is cautious, many times holding back key details when something bad has just happened. So, you have to keep checking online resources and then maybe contacting other Department sources who may know more than you. Oftentimes, the person you reach out to doesn’t know anything, which generates its own line of confusion. Getting bad information makes things even worse. Many years ago, I caught a news snip of a deputy being shot, and I called his station and asked a secretary. I knew who the deputy was. She innocently told me the wrong name, which led to even more confusion and anguish.
Hearing the whole story about a Saturday evening in September when Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer went 10-8 for the final time is just too heartbreaking for any of us to contemplate. Seeing his new fiancée and his grief-stricken family accompanied by equally horrified Sheriff Luna reminds everyone, from the sheriff down to the brand-new Department member who just got hired, that this isn’t just a job. This is so much more. We are a family, and like most families, we don’t all do things the way others want us to. We don’t always do things the way other families do. But one thing we all do, and are all doing now, is we cry together. And that is the sound you will hear around our Department for a while.
I have always been a big fan of those sci-fi shows where people can move in time and change history. While writing this, I daydreamed about what I would do if I had those powers. I imagined being on that sunny Palmdale street on that terrible Saturday when an untreated, violent, paranoid schizophrenic saw Deputy Clinkunbroomer and took a shot. How I wish I could have been there to stop the killer, protect the young deputy or even take the bullet myself. This magical thinking might not belong in a police union magazine. It might be better suited for a blog or Instagram post. But we aren’t all thinking very clearly now, and if ever there was a time to be easier on each other, it’s now.
Ryan Clinkunbroomer … we will never forget you.