SALISBURY — A large contingent of law enforcement officers made its way down Main Street on Tuesday powered by heavy hearts.

The group rides in honor of officers killed in the line of duty. It stopped on the Rowan County Courthouse lawn, for a nutritious refuel as well as to pay respects at the Fallen Officers Memorial monument located downtown.

Typically, the annual group of riders, which is made up of members from various law enforcement agencies from around N.C., logs its mileage in the eastern portion of the state. However, this year, it began riding in Shelby. Raleigh Police Major Brian Harrison explained why.

“We have our team from Shelby,” Harrison said. “They lost Tim Brackeen several years ago and formed a team and joined us about eight years ago. We have always wanted to incorporate their community in some way.”

According to Officer Down Memorial Page, Brackeen was killed in 2016 after succumbing to gunshot wounds sustained while attempting to arrest a man near the intersection of DeKalb and Gidney streets. The suspect was wanted for armed robbery and kidnapping.

“This year, we started in Shelby,” Harrison said. “Over yesterday, today and tomorrow, we will end up in Raleigh, which is where we are from. After that, we will go up to Chesapeake, Virginia, where we will meet up with Law Enforcement United and we will ride to Washington D.C.”

In total, over those six days of riding, they will cover about 530 miles. That toll on the body can be tough.

“It definitely takes a lot of training,” Harrison said. “Most of our team members are from Raleigh and out east. Obviously, y’all have a few more hills than we do … training is a bit more difficult but we do what we can and make sure we take care of ourselves, hydration and nutrition and a lot of pain pills at the end of the day.”

Harrison and the riding team knew it would be more grueling but also wanted to pay tribute to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police officer and the three U.S. Marshals that were gunned down in an April shooting last year while serving a warrant.

“Last year, with what happened in Charlotte, it really drove that home and we said you know what we need to find a way to get out west,” Harrison said.

Who rides?

The bike ride is not an open invitation to just anyone though.

“To be a cyclist in this ride, you need to be a current or retired law enforcement officer or a survivor, which is an immediate family member of an officer who died in the line of duty,” Harrison said. “We do take on others who can do support roles. That means driving our vans for folks that may need to get in there, our trailers that have all of our gear.”

Harrison added that recruitment for the ride does extend to agencies across the state.

“We are on social media and a lot of it is inter-agency recruiting,” Harrison said. “We have three big teams. Raleigh, Shelby and Greenville, but the Raleigh team is not just Raleigh PD. We have someone from the FBI, we have N.C. State Police, Winston-Salem Police Department. It is just word of mouth. They see and hear what we are doing and they want to be a part of it. We reach out usually before we start and say, hey, we are looking for new members, would you like to come join us?”

Stops like the one in Salisbury help advance that mission through visibility. Just before Salisbury, they had stopped in Kannapolis and were then heading to Lexington before Greensboro where the team planned to spend the night.

The event marks the lead up to Peace Officers Memorial Day and Police Week, an observance in the United States that pays tribute to the local, state, and federal peace officers who have died, or who have been disabled, in the line of duty. It is celebrated May 15.