Staff photos / J.T. Whitehouse1: Following American Legion Post 15 Honor Guard member Jeff Vrabel Jr. are Michelle and Steve Burnett. Michelle is the daughter of Richard Becker, a Poland Township police officer shot in the line of duty on Nov. 6, 1983. Becker and the late Poland officer Charles Yates were honored during the second annual Poland Township Police Department’s Fallen Officer Memorial Service on Thursday.

POLAND TOWNSHIP — Under cloudy skies on Thursday, a large group of police officers, family members and local and county leaders gathered to remember those who paid the ultimate price.

The second annual Fallen Officers Memorial Service took place on the day of the year that former President John F. Kennedy in 1962 set aside as National Peace Officers Memorial Day.

The Poland Township service remembers two of its own officers who were killed in the line of service within several months. The first was Poland Township officer Charles K. Yates, who pulled over a woman for drunken driving on March 30, 1984. He struggled with the woman as she was placed in handcuffs. He took the woman to the station to take a breath test, which resulted in another struggle during which he collapsed from a heart attack and died.

The second was patrolman Richard Becker, who was shot and killed by a suspicious person Nov. 6, 1983, near a bar on state Route 170. Becker was informed of a suspicious man hanging around the rear of the bar. While checking the dark area behind the building, the strange man appeared and fired a 12-gauge shotgun into Becker’s chest at 20 feet. The suspect fled, but ended up taking his own life the next day in Winchester, W.Va.

Attending this year’s service was Becker’s daughter, Michelle Burnett. She thought what Poland Township was doing each May 15 was something special.

“It’s humbling and a very kind to be recognizing fallen officers,” she said. “This day is very special as it is my mother’s (Sally Lou Becker) birthday too.”

She previously visited the memorial service in Washington, D.C., where her father’s name was added to a wall of fallen officers and she was grateful to see the memorial service come to the local level.

The keynote speaker for Thursday’s event was retired Poland Township police Chief Carl Massullo. He said Poland Township is not immune from the situations that face all law enforcement officers across the nation.

“Every day, our law enforcement officers respond to the most difficult situations a community may face. In Poland Township, we may not see the severity and frequency of all these acts you see in other cities but from time to time, you’re going to see them here and we have seen them here,” said retired Chief Carl Massullo.

Poland Township Trustee Eric Ungaro also spoke at the ceremony and said he prays no more names will be added to the memorial stone set at the entrance to township hall and the police department.

Police Chief Greg Wilson spoke as well and highlighted the stone memorial.

“Every day, every shift, we will all walk past these plaques and remember,” he said.