Message from our Vice President

To be completely honest with everyone, I don’t really know why I’ve decided to open the blog section of our website. I’ve never considered myself much of a wordsmith, never really liked writing much, and never even kept a journal. I can only hope that we are able to bring something to you that is slightly better than boring on a somewhat regular schedule. Let’s see what happens.

Every year, in October, we begin our membership renewal season. It’s a fairly routine system of sending out email blasts, text messages, and social media posts to remind our members that it’s time to pay their dues. This year, however, is a little bit different. We recently made a decision that some people have found surprising (myself included), some people have found exciting, and some people have found both surprising AND exciting. We are now allowing retired uniformed members of the service to travel on our behalf and represent the greatest police department in the world. To be completely honest, this is a decision that we did not come to easily as we never imagined being low on membership given the massive size of our department. As a board, our top priority is to ensure that we attend the funeral of every law enforcement officer who is murdered in the line of duty, and provide every one of their families with both emotional and financial support when it’s most needed. Allowing retirees to travel will hopefully bring us closer to ensuring that we meet that goal.

There will undoubtedly be some hiccups as we work through this new policy, so please bear with us. We will require that retired members conform to the same rules and procedures as active members as it pertains to uniform appearance with all of our members being required to attend wakes and funerals in a Class A uniform. In most cases we will be expecting all members to travel from NYC area airports to take advantage of jetBlue’s free flights, ensure that we can get a card/check to the travelers, and to ensure that everyone arrives together. It’s all together possible that we may approve travel from alternate airports based on the individual circumstances of each funeral.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with our notification process and travel planning, as soon as we have concrete information on a funeral, a text message blast is sent out to our membership with the dates and location. Also in that text is a link to follow to fill out a brief form indicating that you are available to travel for us. Please, do not reply to the text message as that system is not monitored. Our travel secretary will then follow up with you to “double confirm” your availability and begin planning your travel.

At this point, half of you have probaby said “yada yada yada” and skipped half of what I wrote so I’ll wrap it up by saying this: Every single one of you is reading this because you believe in our mission; now is the time to “Double Down” and prove it. Renew your membership, recruit a new member, make a donation, buy some merchandise…all of the above.

Thanks for reading and stay safe.

Jason Marsman, VP Brotherhood for the Fallen NYC