Out of evil, make good – Let’s create permanent honor for Officer Darron Burks

By Norma Adams-Wade
Texas Metro News Correspondent

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, That it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. …yet …it will bud, and…bring forth boughs like a plant.

Job 14:7, 9 KJV

The “premeditated execution” — as Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia termed it — is one of the one million times when your soul asks… “Why?!” If you are a pragmatist who does not believe in evil, this travesty surely has to make you reconsider. By now — out of the tsunami of media coverage – you surely know that Dallas police officer Darron Lee Burks, 46, was fatally shot on Aug. 29 while taking a break between assignments, sitting in his marked patrol car, in the parking lot of the nonprofit For Oak Cliff.

The building on Ledbetter Drive previously was the longtime location of Moorland Branch YMCA before the Y moved to its current location on Hampton Road in Oak Cliff. The on-duty death of any police officer is prime-time news. However, Burks’ demise has an added quality because of how the community has almost lionized him for his admirable character and public service.

The 17-year former math teacher at Texans Can Academies in Dallas was a graduate of Lake Highland H. S. in Richardson and Paul Quinn College in southeast Dallas who stood out as a moral role model, sports figure, and leader in areas including being president of his Omega Psi Phi fraternity chapter. He was a member of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and served in the parking ministry. Two other officers dispatched to aid him also were injured. One, Sr. Cpl. Jamie Farmer has been released from the hospital.

The other, Cpl. Karissa David, at the last report still was in critical but stable condition and is expected to recover. The suspect, Corey CobbBey, 30, was fatally shot by police after he led them on a 30-minute car chase, stopped the car in Lewisville, then approached the officers pointing a long gun at them before police fired fatal shots at him, police reports state.

Officials on different levels of government are investigating Officer Burks’ death which so far still is seen as a senseless murder of a good man by an apparently misguided stranger. No evidence has turned up that the two men knew each other. An avalanche of praise for Officer Burks’ good character and public service continues days after his death and likely will continue through his funeral service on Saturday, September 7.

And by the time you read this report, many more details likely will have surfaced. I was just thinking…. the impressive, positive feedback about Officer Burks further prompts the question of why such a meritorious humanitarian would be cut down in such a pointless way. Again, “Why?!” It’s an answer too beyond our human pay grade to figure that one out. But, … let’s resolve to help his life have meaning.

Let’s help influence others to live with tangible, meaningful purpose as was his goal — cut short too soon. So, how to make that goal happen for the sake of this martyr? And yes, Burks has become a martyr who died because he chose to serve others through upholding law enforcement to keep the community safe. Those who knew him say he felt his choice was a calling, and, yes, that calling led to his untimely demise.

It seems clear that his decision deserves hoor. Our question is how to best fulfill that honor. See suggestions in the attached two sidebars. The first attachment suggests tangible ways to give meaning to Officer Burks’ sacrifice. The second chronicles comments various people made about his stellar life. I request that you store this report in an important place and use it to help you recall Burks’ impact and perhaps to guide your own.

Norma Adams-Wade is a proud Dallas native, a University of Texas at Austin journalism graduate, and retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. She founded the National Association of Black Journalists and was its first southwest regional director. She became The News’ first Black full-time reporter in 1974. norma_adams_wade@yahoo.com