MOULTRIE — This year's annual Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Service will be held at 10 a.m on Thursday, May 15, on the Courthouse Square.

The service will be conducted by the Moultrie Police Department and the Colquitt County Sheriff's Office and is in conjunction with National Police Week, which is May 11 through May 17, 2008. The theme for National Police Week this year is “Surrounded by Heroes.”

This year will be the first memorial service since the dedication of the Public Safety Memorial on the square. That monument lists the names of 5 law enforcement officers in this county who have been killed in the line of duty over the years.

The five officers killed in the line of duty are:

• Doerun police officer Lawrence M. O’Neal was shot and killed April 7, 1959;

• Moultrie police officer Roy Edward James, 36, was shot and killed Aug. 13, 1960;

• Georgia Department of Revenue Agent Daniel J. Hancock, 52, was killed in a car accident in Dougherty County May 17, 1962. Hancock was a Moultrie resident at the time of the accident;

• Moultrie police Lt. Thomas Jackson Meredith, 61, was shot and killed Aug. 25, 1973, and;

• Colquitt County sheriff’s deputy Tony Reed Wilder, 43, was shot and killed Jan. 31, 1986.

There were 187 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty nationwide in 2007, including five in the state of Georgia. So far in 2008, there have been 36 such deaths nationwide, including three in Georgia.

A total of six Georgia Peace Officers have been killed in the line of duty

since last year’s memorial service. The most recent one was on May 1 when Deputy Robert Griffin of the Decatur County Sheriff's Office was killed in an automobile accident while responding to a call involving a juvenile threatening suicide.

The citizens and businesses of Moultrie and Colquitt County are encouraged to fly their flags at half mass on Thursday in honor and memory of those who have made that ultimate sacrifice.