Los Alamos police invite public to annual memorial service May 15

Los Alamos police are inviting the public to the Justice Center on Friday morning for a memorial service that places local law enforcement loss at the center of the county’s public-safety campus. The annual ceremony is set for 10 a.m. May 15 in the north parking lot of the Los Alamos Justice Center, 2500 Trinity Drive.

The memorial is meant to honor officers, their families and the wider law-enforcement community, but in Los Alamos it also carries a distinctly local weight. The department operates with 41 sworn officers within 88.73 total full-time positions, including 47.7 civilian positions, so the names and faces behind the badge are familiar in a county where police are visible in everyday civic life. Chief Dino Sgambellone leads the department.

Attendees will see a service built around remembrance rather than formality. A 2024 local account said the memorial includes two plaques, one honoring retired Los Alamos police officers who later died and another honoring Los Alamos citizens who became officers in other jurisdictions and were killed in the line of duty. Another local report from 2015 said the ceremony honored law enforcement and corrections officers who lost their lives in service to others. That history helps explain why the event remains one of the county’s most personal public observances.

The service also falls within National Police Week, which was established by presidential proclamation from President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and includes Peace Officers Memorial Day on May 15. The national observance centers on Washington, D.C., where the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, dedicated in 1991, now bears the names of more than 24,000 officers. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund has scheduled the 38th Annual Candlelight Vigil for Wednesday, May 13, as part of the 2026 observance.

The national toll remains sobering. The memorial fund reported 111 law-enforcement line-of-duty deaths in 2025, down 25% from 148 in 2024. It said 102 of the 2025 fatalities were male officers and 9 were female officers, with an average age of 44 and an average of 14 years of service. Firearms-related deaths were the leading cause.

The county’s memorial notice also appears to use older Thursday language, even though May 15, 2026 falls on a Friday. The date itself, however, is fixed: a morning service at the Justice Center that links Los Alamos to a national tradition of honoring those who never came home from duty.