BY STACIE LETT CAIN
Three empty seats stood at the front of the room in Mooresville Town Hall on Tuesday morning in recognition of the ultimate sacrifice made by three town police officers in the past 87 years — and the heroism they exhibited in their service to the community.
“The three chairs you see here — we don’t want any more. That goes without saying,” Police Chief and Assistant Town Manager Ron Campurciani said during a National Police Week ceremony. “But as horrible as those three events were, what would be worse is if we forgot about them.”
May 4, 2025, marked the sixth anniversary of the murder of MPD Officer Jordan Sheldon, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop. He loss was marked by one of the empty chairs on display Tuesday. The other two represent Chief James Rimmer, who died in an auto accident in 1938, and Lt. Larry Barger, who was killed while responding to a domestic disturbance in 1974.
“Sometimes it feels like we are on an island by ourselves,” Campurciani explained. “So this event, when it comes around, is always a blessing for us. We so appreciate it.”
Campurciani went on to describe the average day in the life of an officer and how it differs from others.
“You got up this morning, got dressed and you wondered if you looked presentable,” he explained. “There are officers out on the streets working right now that when they got dressed, put on 25 pounds of gear, and checked their bullet-proof vest to make sure it still fit right. If they put on a few pounds, and there was a gap, they wondered if they got shot if that gap could be the difference between life or death.”
Having been a police chief for 15 years, Campurciani said he hears regularly from residents who say they can’t imagine what officers see and do every day.
“I wake up every morning between 2 and 3. You get consumed with thoughts of are they trained enough, do they have enough equipment,” he said. “You don’t want this to happen under your watch. But you also know that even if the answer is yes and they have the training and the equipment, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It’s the same thought that wakes me up every night. All the training and equipment in the world is not going to change that.”
Explaining that training and equipment are essential, but not the only tools in the toolbox for the survival of a police officer, Campurciani gave an example showing that even in the victories are costs.
“We recently did a sting operation to catch the worst in society, those that pray on children,” he explained. “And even though we were able to make a difference — those people stopped were on the news, it doesn’t show the whole story.”
He went on the explain that spending months in online chat rooms dealing with unimaginable photos and content to be able to find the perpetrators comes at a cost to the officers.
“You have to end up in therapy to get past the things you saw and said in the effort to stop those actually preying on those children,” he said. “That’s the reality of what we do.”
Campurciani had one take away and one ask for this year’s event.
“Last year we swore in a young lady (officer) and afterwards we were taking pictures and her mom approached me and said, ‘You’re going to keep her safe, right?’ ” he recalled. “What do you say to that?
“What I said was that the only thing I could promise is that we would love her, we would take care of her and that she will never be alone. I couldn’t promise anything else. She looked at me surprised but then she understood.
“The take-away for me on this, this memorial week, is that people come up to us every day and say I can’t imagine what the officers deal with,” he said in closing. “I’m asking you to try to imagine in. Try to imagine it and then remember that they are living this every single day. Please try to understand the real weight of this badge we all wear.”
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