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Officer feted in book as policing hero |
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Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
When shots rang out at W.R. Myers high school in Taber, an unarmed resource officer put his life on the line to stop the 14-year-old gunman.
By Kristen Harding
Alta Newspaper Group, LP
But retired Lethbridge police Sgt. Dennis Reimer says he doesn't feel like a hero, and his actions that fateful day were simply a combination of instinct, training and doing what had to be done.
"I was just doing my job," said Reimer. "I'd been doing it for 26 years and it just happened that I was in the right place at the right time."
Reimer, who started the school resource program in Lethbridge and helped pave the way in Taber, is one of 10 police officers from across the country featured in a new book, Canadian Police Heroes: Beyond the Call of Duty.
On April 28, 1999 two Taber students were shot in a hallway, one fatally, when Reimer saw an opportunity to disarm the young gunman who had brought a sawed-off rifle to the school and intended to kill everyone.
"You can't spend a lot of time thinking these things out," he said. "You have to rely on instinct and training. If you do take that time to say 'well, should I or shouldn't I,' often it's too late."
Looking back on his career, Reimer says he'll never forget the shooting that left 17-year-old Jason Lang dead and another student injured but it's the day-to-day acts of bravery, the incidents that don't get publicity, that truly make all police officers heroes.
"Very few members of the public realize how much of their safety depends on the street policemen that are out there every day right on the front line," he said.
Reimer says responding to domestic disputes, breaking up fights and directing traffic may seem like just part of "the job," but situations can turn deadly and every shift that ends with an officer going home to their family is a good one.
"We're always very quick to criticize the police, we're always quick to find fault," said author Dorothy Pedersen. "But it's important that people give consideration to the effects that some really dreadful work situations cause for police officers. I don't think it does us any harm at all to just thank a cop."
Pedersen is the author of two previous books and a freelance writer and public speaker. Canadian Police Heroes, was launched earlier this month in Orangeville, Ontario - her hometown.
"One of the most difficult parts of the book was choosing who was going to be in it," she said. "One of the things I didn't have a lot of control over, but seriously affected who was and wasn't included in the book, was the media relations person that I would get to speak to at some of the bigger police forces."
When Pedersen contacted Lethbridge regional police she spoke with Insp. Jeff Cove, who handled media inquiries at the time.
She says Cove, who is listed in the book's acknowledgments, immediately suggested Reimer, and helped put her in touch with the retired officer.
"We've all heard about this story, we've all heard about the drama and the tragedy involved in this story, but nobody has ever looked at this story from the police officer's perspective," she said.
"That, to me, was very, very important to get, and I really felt that added a whole new dimension to this story."
Pedersen interviewed Reimer over the phone and says right away she could tell how compassionate he was to everyone involved, even the shooter.
"To me, that put him on a whole different level all together," she said. "At the actual moment when these shootings were taking place and he was in the school corridors, even when he put the boy up against the wall and got the gun away from him, when he described that, it was very evident to me that he did this in a very controlled, compassionate way. This boy was very lucky that Dennis was the one."
Pedersen notes all the officers she interviewed were very humble and at times extracting the details from them "was like pulling teeth."
"I hope I've done justice to their stories," she said. "It was my honour to have been able to talk to them about these situations."
Canadian Police Heroes: Beyond the Call of Duty is available from www.amazon.ca for $9.95 (plus shipping costs). Pedersen says most bookstores should also be able to order it. |
