In honor of national Peace Officers Memorial Day, the Glendale Police Department hosted its annual memorial ceremony to honor the department’s fallen officers on Wednesday in the station’s community room.
The ceremony also paid tribute to the Glendale area’s first such officer, Charles Whitney Smith, who died in the line of duty in 1915. Smith was the marshal of the seemingly lost city of Tropico before it was annexed into the city of Glendale and has now been posthumously sworn in as a Glendale police officer. Smith’s impact on the community was not well known until a GPD sergeant recently discovered his unmarked grave site at Forest Lawn, and the department had a plaque created to mark it after learning more about his legacy.
“As an officer, he showed the kind of hard work, tenacity and courage that we expect of our officers,” police wrote in a booklet chronicling Smith’s life. “His selfless determination to capture a robbery suspect ultimately cost him his life and made him a local hero.”
First published in the May 18 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
