Troop F honors fallen officers at Wallkill memorial service

Uniformed troopers, retirees and family members of fallen officers gathered Friday at New York State Police Troop F headquarters on Crystal Run Road in Middletown to honor members killed in the line of duty. The annual memorial service, held during Police Week and ahead of Memorial Day, gave the region’s largest State Police troop a chance to turn remembrance into a public act, with marching troopers moving to the front of headquarters and relatives of deceased officers seated among current personnel.

The ceremony carried a meaning that went beyond Wallkill and Orange County. Troop F covers Greene, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster counties, making the memorial a regional observance for communities that rely on the troop’s patrol and investigative work every day. The service also reflected the broader State Police tradition of keeping fallen officers within the culture of the agency, rather than allowing their names to fade into plaque-only memory.

Troop F, headquartered at 55 Crystal Run Road in Middletown, was activated in 1968 after the 1967 troop-line revision that reorganized State Police coverage across the state. Today, Major Andre R. Terry leads the troop as its 20th commander, a post he took effective Feb. 27, 2025. State Police say he oversees more than 500 sworn and civilian personnel across the five-county footprint, a scale that helps explain why the memorial service remains a major institutional event as much as a solemn local one.

The annual tribute comes during National Police Week, which in 2026 included the 38th Annual Candlelight Vigil on May 13. New York State also maintains a Police Officers Memorial at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, where an annual Remembrance Ceremony honors officers slain in the line of duty. Within that statewide framework, the Wallkill service marked Troop F’s own annual salute to members who died serving their communities over the past half century, while also acknowledging the families who continue to carry that loss.

For Orange County, the gathering underscored how deeply the State Police presence is woven into civic life. The service linked headquarters on Crystal Run Road to the wider network of law enforcement institutions across the Hudson Valley, reinforcing that the cost of police service is measured not only in risk on the road, but in the lasting burden carried by families and the agencies that remember them.