Thursday, September 17, 2009

Kansas City Police to escort Los Angeles Police memorial out of city Friday


PRESS RELEASE:

To support their law enforcement brethren in Los Angeles, Kansas City Police officers will escort a large memorial for LAPD fallen officers out of Kansas City at about 1 p.m. Friday.

The 32-foot-long and 12-foot, 3-inch high memorial is being constructed by A. Zahner Company and will be transported on a semi-truck to Los Angeles, Calif. A. Zahner produces custom architectural and ornamental metal work for the commercial industry and is located at 1400 E. 9th St. in Kansas City, Mo. Kansas City Police will escort the Los Angeles Police Department Fallen Officers Memorial out of Kansas City limits, at which point a U.S. Department of Transportation escort will take over. When the memorial arrives in Los Angeles on Monday night or Tuesday morning, LAPD officers will escort it to its final home on a public plaza one block south of L.A. City Hall and next to the new Los Angeles Police Department Administration Building.

The monument was designed by the L.A. Office of Gensler, a pre-eminent, world-wide architectural and planning firm. The design involves complex wall surfaces and edges and will feature 2,106 brass plaques. Of those, 201 will be engraved with the names, ranks and the day each LAPD officer gave his or her life in the line of duty. A stylized LAPD badge also will be part of the memorial. All the plaques will be suspended in four layers from the core of the memorial. A rendering of the memorial is above.

“Zahner has fabricated this wall with care, dignity and sophistication befitting the solemn nature of this memorial,” said Gary Davis, Zahner’s Director of Marketing.

After Zahner workers load the memorial onto a trailer and build a protective crate around it at about 1 p.m., Kansas City Police will lead it to the State Line, avoiding as many overpasses as possible.


The memorial will be unveiled in L.A. at an October 14 ceremony, said Linda Wagener, CEO of the Los Angeles Police Foundation. The memorial, which was privately funded, replaces one that was damaged beyond repair when it was moved for the construction of L.A.’s new police administration building.

“Several of us here got choked up when we found out Kansas City Police would be escorting it to city limits,” Wagener said. “In law enforcement, we really are a brotherhood.”

For more information about A. Zahner, visit
www.azahner.com.


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