Police Reflect on Those Who Died on the Job [Video]

John Frank didn't need the descriptions provided at Friday's ceremony to know about the four Norwalk police officers who died while on duty. He remembers them

Frank, a retired Norwalk police officer, was on the force with three of the four officers who were especially remembered by the department at the Norwalk Police Memorial Service.

On June 20, 1962, police officer Sherrald Gorton, 37, was directing traffic at a Richards Avenue construction site when a vehicle backed up, striking him. The death of the 12-year veteran prompted legislation to require audible warning devices that would go off whenever a truck backs up.

"We used to call it the Sherrald Gorton Law," Frank recalled.

Nine years later, Norwalk Police Sgt. Nicholas Fera was attempting to arrest two men who had robbed the West Norwalk branch of the Connecticut National Bank. As he tried to take the suspects into custody he was shot and fatally wounded, as was one of the robbers. The other got away but was later captured.

"Within half an hour after the word got out, every cop in Norwalk that was not way out of town on vacation was in the building—you know, 'What can we do to help?'—and we worked all night looking for this other guy," Frank recalled. "They broke us up into teams, and each team had a superisor and an FBI agent.

"Most people, the moment they found we were looking for this guy—man, they couldn't have been more cooperative."

The death of Marco Carias occurred in 1982, just two years after he had joined the force. Carias, who worked undercover with the Statewide Narcotics Task Force, died in an automobile accident just after he had bought some drugs in Danbury. His car struck a pole, giving him multiple injuries that later resulted in his death.

"We went over that car with a fine-toothed comb," Frank recalls. "To this day, nobody knows—it could've been a deer. We never did find out."

Since Carias had only been with the police department for two years, and much of that time was spent doing undercover work with the state taskforce, "half the cops in Norwalk didn't know who he was," Frank said.

He was from New York City, and his family wanted the memorial service there. New York police have a special squad for funerals, and they helped direct mourners when the funeral home couldn't contain the crowd that had gathered, Frank remembered.

"They had speakers outside, so we could hear the service," he said. An elevated subway line was nearby, however, and the sound of the passing trains threatened to drown out the speakers. So the NYPD squad leader made a phone call and shut down the subway line for the length of the service.

Carias was buried on Long Island, and an enormous procession headed out of New York City toward the cemetery, with motorcycle cops closing off lanes to let it through, Frank said.

"I don't know if anybody did a count of all the police cars, but there was a hell of a lot of them."

Well before Frank's time of service on the force, in 1930 Norwalk police lost their first uniformed member in the line of duty. Sgt. Frank S. Stratton, who had been a police officer for 28 years, was on patrol with another officer near East Avenue and Westport Avenue when they spotted a suspicious vehicle.

Two uniformed marines who had deserted their unit had stolen a car. As Stratton was putting the men in his patrol car, he was struck by a speeding vehicle on Westport Avenue. Stratton, 64, left a surviving wife and daughter.

The four Norwalk officers are among the 19,298 police who lost their lives in the line of duty, including 135 from Connecticut, Police Chief Harry W. Rilling said during Friday's memorial service.

Across the country, he said, 72 officers have died so far this year in the line of duty, a 72 percent increase from the same time last year. Of those officers, 33 were shot to death, a 57 percent increase over the same period in 2010, he said.

Sgt. Thomas Roncinske, president of the Norwalk Police Union, also spoke at the event, saying that more than 58,000 assaults on police officers happen each year in the United States, and 16,000 serious injuries occur to law enforcement officers in a typical year.

For Ralph Sherrald Gorton, the death of one officer was devastating—that of his father, Sherrald Gorton.

"We were at the end of our school year, and I remember a lot of ambulances going off, and then, all of a sudden, somebody came over and escorted me out of my class, and took me home."

Gorton, then seven years old, thought it was a special treat to be taken out of school, and waited with anticipation to find out what had led to his good fortune.

"I remember only bits and pieces of my father," he said. "Taking me to a Mets game ..."

Only when his mother was passing away, he said, did she start sharing a lot of information about his father, Gorton said. "We didn't talk about it very much at home, because my mother was heartbroken."