End Of Watch Ride To Remember In Van Buren County Wednesday

motorcycle-copyrightfree-8
motorcycle-copyrightfree-8

The End of Watch Ride to Remember will be in Paw Paw on Wednesday at 8 a.m. to honor Van Buren County Deputy Sheriff James Lear. Sheriff Daniel Abbott says the motorcycle group will be in the parking lot to the south of the main sheriff’s department office at 205 South Kalamazoo Street. The group is on a ride of nearly 21,000 miles in 79 days to honor what they call an “unprecedented 600 fallen officers killed in the line of duty in 2021.” Their journey began on June 1. Last year, they rode over 22,300 miles to honor 339 officers killed in the line of duty in 2020 and it was the longest continuous ride in the United States, and the longest memorial ride. The event name is from an officer’s End of Watch, a ceremony in which a police dispatcher issues a final call to a fallen officer over the radio, followed by silence. All officers in that department hear the call, and observe the silence, remembering their fallen brother or sister.