Eight police officers from Cobb County participated in the Police Unity Tour to raise funds for a Washington memorial and honor a fellow officer.
The Police Unity Tour was organized in May of 1997 where 18 police officer bicyclists rode from Florham Park, NJ to the National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial (NLEOM) in Washington DC in order to raise $18,000 for the Memorial.
The event has grown over the last 20 years and now there are more than 2,000 police officer bicyclists who make the 250-300 mile bicycle ride to Washington DC every May in one of eight different chapters and routes in order to raise awareness for police officers who have died in the line of duty and to raise funds for the NLEOM.
The NLEOM receives no public funding and is the only memorial in DC that changes every year as names of those killed in the line of duty are added every spring. The Police Unity Tour is the largest single donor to the NLEOM.
Police officers participating include: Officer David Snively with Brookhaven PD; Major Jeff Adcock, Cobb PD; Detective Amy Worthington, Cobb PD; Detective Becki Hawkins, Kennesaw State University PD; Sgt. Jeff Perry, Cobb PD; Detective Jason Harder, Cobb PD; Detective Amy Valente, Marietta PD; Detective Gretchen Ingram, Marietta PD.
In 2016 the eight police officers from Cobb County were part of the effort that raised a total of $2.3 million for the NLEOM. To date, Police Unity Tour riders have raised a total of $20,000,000 for the memorial.
Each rider is responsible for training to ride 250-300 miles in three days, bicycle equipment, getting to New Jersey and back from DC and for raising $1,850 in order to participate. Cobb County riders ride with the Southern California Chapter of the Police Unity Tour (SOCALPUT) and we have become known as the “Dixie Division” of SOCALPUT.
“We each ride in honor of a fallen police officer and I ride for Cobb County Police Officers Sgt. Steve Reeves and Officer Steve Gilner who were killed in a SWAT standoff on July 23, 1999,” said Maj. Jeff Adcock.
If you would like to learn more about the Police Unity Tour please contact Jeff Adcock at jeffrey.adcock@cobbcounty.org or look up the website socalput.com.
From the June 2016 issue of The Bright Side, Cobb County Georgia’s Newspaper covering Smyrna, Vinings, Mableton, Powder Springs and Austell, GA.
