DRUG WAR CLAIMS ANOTHER CASUALTY

The most dreaded phrase a law enforcement officer ever hears echoed
across Hampton Roads late Thursday night for the second time this year.

Officer down.

Detective Mike Phillips, 37, a six-year veteran of the Virginia Beach
Police Department, was shot three times during an undercover operation
in which he was buying a half-pound of marijuana from a suspected drug
dealer. His funeral is at 1 p.m. today at Rock Church in Virginia Beach.

Phillips was the seventh police officer shot and killed in South
Hampton Roads in the past 10 years. In January, Chesapeake Detective
Jarrod Shivers was killed while executing a drug search warrant.

The killing of a police officer, once rare, has become all too
commonplace, following the proliferation of guns and drugs on the
streets. Although such killings tragically seem almost routine, we can
never allow ourselves to become numb to the possible consequences
these men and women face every time they step out the door in the name
of public safety.

Friends described Phillips, who lived in Chesapeake, as a doting
husband and father who was showing his boys the heating and
air-conditioning business he ran in his off hours. Fellow officers and
business customers alike knew him as a funny, larger-than-life guy who
made the people around him feel safe. They remembered the big things -
that he was a good listener - and the little things - he liked Reese's
Peanut Butter Cups.

He was a police officer first. He began his career as a patrol officer
in Hampton in 1999, moving to Virginia Beach in 2002. He had been in
the special investigations unit for two years.

On Thursday night, he was doing what officers increasingly are called
to do: set up drug deals with those believed to be selling, then
arrest them and get them off the street.

Two men are charged with first-degree murder in Phillips' death.
Investigators say they don't know whether the suspects wanted to rob
Phillips or whether they somehow figured out he was a police officer.
But the result is that what has become routine police work - buying 8
ounces of marijuana to make a case against a dealer - cost a man his
life, two boys their father and our community one of its protectors.

Phillips' death is one more painful reminder that progress in
confronting the drug problem comes at tremendous sacrifice.