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The sound of taps echoed outside the Merced County Administration Building on May 14 as relatives and law enforcement personnel remembered the county’s fallen peace officers.
“Locally, we have lost 17 law enforcement officers since the county was established in 1855. Their names are etched here in the memorial wall behind me,” said Merced County Undersheriff Corey Gibson during the ceremony’s opening remarks. “The sacrifices of these great heroes deserve recognition to be honored by all of us.”
About 200 attendees marked the 20th Annual Merced County Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony. This year, a new memorial stone was unveiled to honor the late Merced Police Department detective Joseph Henderson.
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A teary-eyed Nery Henderson, wife of Joseph Henderson, gripped her son’s hand as Merced Police Capt. Joseph Perez addressed the family from a podium during a speech. He described Joseph Henderson as a diligent policeman whose commitment to the department and community did not falter, despite being chronically ill.
“For Joe, being a detective wasn’t just a job. It was his calling,” Perez said. “He believed deeply in justice, in protecting the vulnerable, and seeing each case through, no matter how difficult the road. That sense of duty never wavered, even when he faced his greatest personal challenge – brain cancer.”
Perez then invited Henderson’s son, Logan, up with him to uncover the new engraved stone. Logan Henderson removed the midnight blue cloth draped over the monument, hugged Perez and returned to his mother in the audience.
His father’s stone joins three others in the memorial garden dedicated to peace officers who died while on active duty, even if the cause wasn’t necessarily related to their work, Merced Police Chief Steven Stanfield said.
“We don’t want to minimize that,” Stanfield said, explaining that the names chiseled on the county’s memorial wall represent staff who were fatally wounded in the line of fire during a service call.
The memorial stones are a relatively new feature paying tribute to officers who died of causes unrelated to law enforcement business. “It’s a small way we can acknowledge them,” Stanfield said.
Logan Henderson was 6 years old when his father died in 2019 from battling brain cancer, according to Nery Henderson, Logan’s mother. Then 41, the police officer served nearly 14 years with the Merced Police Department. Logan, now a 12-year-old preteen, plans to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I’m thinking of becoming a police officer,” Logan said after the ceremony concluded.
Other aspiring police officers also attended the memorial ceremony.
Several young people with the Merced County Sheriff’s Office Explorers Program, a mentorship program that prepares young people for law enforcement roles, posed in decorated uniforms alongside enlarged portraits of the 17 fallen peace officers of Merced County.
In March of this year, Abraham Bustos Guzman, who served as a volunteer with the Gustine Police Department, was killed by a drunk driver. Guzman, 28, of Merced was acting as a Good Samaritan by stopping to help at the scene of one collision, when he was struck by another vehicle early on the morning of March 16. The CHP said the two drivers were both intoxicated.
Guzman was a graduate of Golden Valley and lived in Merced with his parents. He had previously served as a police explorer and volunteer in Merced. Guzman worked as a truck driver and was interested in pursuing the avenue of law enforcement. He had gone on several ride-alongs in Gustine and helped in whatever ways he was asked, including with the department’s Christmas operation last December. He applied to serve as a volunteer in January and was scheduled to complete Module II of the Merced Police Academy on April 2 at Merced College. He had planned to begin the hiring process with Gustine Police Department as a Level II Reserve Officer at the completion of his graduation.
In 1914, Deputy Warden Rodolph was shot in the back by a poacher, making him the first officer to be killed in the Merced County-area. Since then, 16 officers were slain, with Officer Jose Rivera being the most recent name engraved in the county’s memorial wall.
Stanfield said the annual ceremony is a special and “emotional” occasion reserved for the families and colleagues to remember fallen officers.
“They’re still important members of our family,” he said.
— Sabra Stafford contributed to this report.
