As Baton Rouge Police lay to rest one of the officers killed in an ambush, troopers from the Magnolia state will be there to offer their support.
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Funeral services will be held Monday for 32-year-old Montrell Jackson.
Like fellow law enforcement officer Deputy Brad Garafola, Jackson’s procession was led down the road that has become infamous, Airline Hwy, passing the B-Quik gas station where three lost their lives.
Officers Montrell Jackson, Brad Garafola, and Matthew Gerald, all killed in Baton Rouge on Sunday, July 17, 2016.
On Friday, hundreds turned out for a funeral service for police officers Matthew Gerald, 41.
Just three days before his death, Jackson married with a four-month-old son wrote a Facebook post detailing how hard it was for him to be both a black man and a police officer.
His flag-draped black casket, striped with a police officer’s blue, bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wife’s calling Jackson “her Superman”.
A SWAT officer gunned down Long, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, after he killed three officers and wounded three others during a shootout outside a convenience store on July 17.
Gov. John Bel Edwards cited Jackson’s Facebook post as he described the officer as a man who loved his community and cared deeply about protecting it. Unfortunately, this could have been the situation leading to the murder of the Dallas and Baton Rouge police officers.
“P.S. God, Montrell has a lot of shoes, so please make a lot room for them”, Pitts said before ending by quoting, in part, his brother’s prophetic Facebook post. “In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat”, Jackson wrote.
Thousands packed the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge on Monday for a 2½-hour service celebrating city police officer Montrell Jackson. A Superman “S” was emblazoned on a collage of photographs displayed above Jackson’s coffin.
“We’ll miss you”, he said. “They were heroes. That’s what they do, they protect us”.
“My heart goes out to all the victims”, Kincaid said.
Almost everyone who spoke mentioned the Facebook post, in which Jackson described himself – in the midst of recent protests over the shooting death of a black man by white police officers – as “tired physically and emotionally”. It’s not a black thing. Its a human race thing.. Police say they don’t know if Long was responding to that death, but they say he deliberately targeted officers.
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At the same time, he argued that keeping police officers safe is “not inconsistent” with treating the communities they serve with dignity and respect. A multi-agency public memorial service for all three officers is planned for Thursday.
