Riding for Officers - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Riding for Officers

   Approximately 150 officers are killed in the line of duty each year.
   One couple is biking across the country trying to raise $30,000 for families of fallen officers.
    While their planned route brings them to Bismarck, it's one stop the couple are honored to make.
   Arielle Johnson has the story.


( Jim Caverly/ Biking for Fallen Officers) "What the police officers are going out and doing, nobody in the community would want to go out and do."
"One Minute there sitting and relaxing and later they're facing a gun barrel, the job is very dangerous."
Retired FBI-Special Agent Jim Caverly is spending his summer bicycling across 14 states with his wife following in their home on wheels.
Caverly is riding for COPS, Concerns of Police Survivors which is a non profit organization.
Riding in honor of local, county, state and federal law enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty.
(Jim Caverly/Biking for Fallen Officers)"were hoping that we spread the word a bit that the program does exist, you hope most departments never need it, but if they do it's a nice fall back to have"
The Caverly's have been counselors in the program for the past 23 years and have worked with many families, who have lost an officer.
They say one of their biggest accomplishments is seeing the benefits and results from the survivors
(Jeanne Caverly/ Riding for Fallen Officers)some of our survivors come back year after year to help new survivors and you can see people that were devastated 4 or 5 years ago and just thought it was the end of the world, and now they're smiling."
It's the Caverly's first time ever being in North Dakota, eager to meet the police officers of Bismarck, who know the pain of loosing a fellow officer.
(Jim Caverly/Biking for Fallen Officers) You know you wish you could bring a magic pill into your community and make all this pain go away, but it doesn't work that way."
Bismarck.KXNews. I'm Arielle Johnson.

Jim and Jeanne started their journey in Oregon, and will end in October in Maine to celebrate Jim's 70th Birthday.