It began when a deputy’s daughter was in the hospital on Christmas Eve in 1995.

Across the nation, police families have taken up the slack. Surviving the absences of their officers while dealing with social media comments, inaccurate press, and voices of those who’ve jumped on the bandwagon of demonizing those we love.

To say this week has been difficult for law enforcement is an understatement. The culture of police hate seems to have risen to new heights—and our own are misunderstood, accused, maligned, judged, abandoned by leaders, wounded, and killed.

The incident didn’t seem like a big deal at first. Stacy Ettel came home and told his wife, Martha, about how he and four other officers had been involved in a shooting that had seriously injured a student.

On March 2, 2010, Ettel was the watch commander on duty. He was at the UF basketball game, watching the athletes when he heard a call about a disturbance in an apartment.

John and Patty were like two little kids, affectionate, smiling, and genuinely happy to celebrate John’s retirement. He’d served for 31 years in an honorable law enforcement career.

Whatever you do together, take the opportunity to celebrate your relationship, and reintroduce romance in the midst of the mid-winter, pre-spring blahs.

In July 2015, 40 wives of police officers around the country met together for the first annual Wives Behind the Badge Conference in West Virginia. It was a rich time of connecting with those who understand this law enforcement life,...