In memory of Officer Briggs
From the UnionLeader.com website on November 28, 2006
He was a cop's cop
By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
Union Leader Staff
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
Manchester – Slain Manchester police officer Michael L. Briggs was the type of cop you could count on to back you up in a jam and inspire you with his indomitable optimism when the streets wore you down, his friends on the force said yesterday.
A bicycle patrol officer, Briggs, 35, loved working the “Jeep Shift,” zipping in and out of alleys and up and down streets on his mountain bike during the night and pre-dawn hours — fearless, skilled and thriving in the close contact with residents the job afforded him.
“He was a cop’s cop. He loved the night shift because it was dark and he could sneak in and around. It was everything he loved to do,” added Officer Michael R. Bergeron, 26, one of Briggs’ close friends and former partner.
The two men went to police academy together and were sworn in the same day, Aug. 15, 2001. Bergeron still remembers feeling intimidated by the burly, confident former Marine nine years his senior the day they first met.
“He walked up to me with the biggest smile in the world and I just shook his hand. And you knew he was going to be a great friend and you could count on him on the streets,” said Bergeron, who wore a black mourning band across his badge.
Briggs did not let him down. Bergeron, in turn, assured his friend on his deathbed Monday he would do the same.
“It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do,” said Bergeron of the final moments he spent at Briggs’ hospital bedside hours after his comrade was shot once in the head at 2:45 a.m. Monday.
“To see him like that was really tough,” he said. “I told him his family was going to be taken care off and that he really has nothing to worry about.” Briggs died Tuesday afternoon.
Bergeron and his brother and sister officers now cope with the devastation of having lost one of their own who gave so much and the hard reality that the senseless shooting could happen to any one of them.
“It’s surreal,” said Officer Brian N. O’Keefe, the Police Athletic League coordinator and 11-year veteran who also served as a bicycle patrol officer.
“I feel like someone is going to punch me or kick me or wake me and say ‘It’s over,’” said O’Keefe, 33.
“I’ve had to answer questions by my 8-year-old and 6-year-old. They ask me ‘Are you going to come home?’ And you say, ‘Yeah. I’m going to come home.’ But you’re not sure,” O’Keefe explained.
Officer Robert Harrington, a 22-year veteran on the force, has his locker in the same row in the locker room that Briggs did. That and the fact both men are former Marines helped forge a bond between them.
“He was a stand-up guy ... He was a legitimate tough guy, but he never played himself up ... He was very steadfast,” Harrington said. A member of the Special Reaction Team, Harrington was called out at 3:50 a.m. Monday to begin the grid searches of the neighborhood for Briggs’ alleged killer, Michael K. Addison, 26.
“That was a phone call I certainly never expected and I hope I never get again,” Harrington said.
After Addison was captured in Boston late that afternoon and the searches were called off, Harrington went to Elliot Hospital where most of the officers not working that day already were gathered in a conference room set up with coffee, food and a television set. There they watched local media reports while being given frequent updates on Briggs’ condition, which they knew was grave. Two by two, they went up to Briggs’ hospital room to pay their final respects.
Harrington would not share his last words to Briggs, but said he spoke with his mother who “took comfort in knowing that he was doing what he wanted to do.”
“Mike, when he was in the Marine Corps and when he was a police officer, he was doing what he wanted to do, what he felt was best for his country and the people he wanted to serve,” Harrington added.
Friends remember Briggs as an “outstanding” man who struck a commanding presence wherever he went and spoke constantly of his wife, two sons and parents.
“The men and women of this department are devastated,” said Deputy Chief Glenn Leidemer, head of the patrol division.
“They are trying to come to grips with this. We believe that Michael is dead for no other reason than that he is a police officer,” Leidemer said.
After the state medical examiner’s officer released Briggs’ body Wednesday, three cruisers escorted it to Lambert Funeral Home & Crematory in preparation for tonight’s wake, where at least one uniformed office remains stationed at his side around the clock.
“We don’t leave him alone,” Leidemer said.
The Rev. Thomas P. Steinmetz, a 24-year veteran of the Manchester force who retired in 2002 and now is pastor of Our Lady of Cedars, said it’s difficult for the public to appreciate the bond that develops among police officers and the blow suffered when one of their own is killed in the line of duty.
“The officers themselves are extremely grieved. A lot of people don’t understand the closeness that’s developed between police officers. To lose somebody like that, it’s literally like losing a family member ... I think it’s because it’s almost like troops in battle,” said Steinmetz, who now serves as the department’s chaplain.
“God has watched over these guys for so long. There have been so many near-misses through the years,” he said of times when officers survived being shot at, dragged by cars and other near-death encounters.
“I just attribute it to God’s protection that these people survived. There have been so many incidents where officers could have and, by rights, should have been killed and came out of it OK,” he said.
The well-wishes, prayers and outpouring of support from the community helps ease the pain of their loss and gives officers comfort that the public has developed a greater appreciation and understanding for the dangers and demands of the job, officers said.
Each day, the makeshift memorial of flowers, flickering candles, prayers and notes left by residents, law enforcement agencies and community groups continues to swell along the front of police headquarters.
“It’s shown you what kind of a city we are in,” O’Keefe said. Still, he said “when all is said and done, that’s when it’s going to hit ... When the community stops showing its outpouring of support, that’s when it’s going to hit hard.”
