The signs along the interstates are written in Highway Gothic

The other day i learned the font on all the official signs along all the interstates is called Highway Gothic.

And one of those signs here is for a 25-mile portion of Interstate 65 running through Indianapolis called the Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds Highway. It’s named after the famous R&B musician and within Babyface Highway is a one-mile stretch subdivided and demarcated as the Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile. i notice both signs every time we drive by them, either on our way into the city or to the airport.

Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds Highway.
Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile.

Both names have a momentum to them. But in all honesty and no disrespect to Babyface, it’s the fatalistic one that really contains that good syllabic inertia.

Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile. Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile. Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile. Master Trooper Michael Greene Memorial Mile.

And of course you always wonder what happened to Master Trooper Michael Greene to earn him his Memorial Mile. And this is what the Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial Website has to say about what happened to Master Trooper Michael Greene on Friday, February 5, 1993, at 1:45PM

Master Trooper Michael Greene was shot and killed while questioning two subjects along Interstate 65 (Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds Highway) in northwest Indianapolis. He had observed a southbound] vehicle parked and one of two men urinating along the side of the highway. Upon questioning both subjects, who were intoxicated, he learned the man who had been urinating was wanted on an outstanding warrant. While handcuffing him, the other man shot and killed Master Trooper Greene.

By the way there’s another website called Officer Down Memorial Page that supposedly lists every cop killed on the job in the country. According to Officer Down Memorial Page there are 26,679 recorded ‘Line of Duty Deaths FOR ALL TIME.’ Which is a lot of dead people sure

but then again a quick look at this other website says that cops have killed 7,760 people since 2017 alone. So doing the extremely rough and hypothetical math here, cops hypothetically kill as many people as ‘Line of Duty Deaths FOR ALL TIME’ every 27.5 years. Line of Duty Deaths are often abbreviated as LODDs by the way.

Officer Down Memorial Page breaks down LODDS by category: Gunfire, Auto, Medical, and Other. And it’s clear ‘Medical’ must mean genuine health issues and not, like, complications from crime injuries because those numbers skyrocketed in 2020-2021 during Covid while the other LODD categories remained relatively stable. So Officer Down Memorial Page apparently counts your everyday fatal illnesses as Line of Duty Deaths, which is pretty wild if you ask me.

Anyway. Master Trooper Michael Greene didn’t die from illness. he died because some drunk 45-year-old probably with piss on his jeans shot him with a .25 caliber while Master Trooper Michael Greene was handcuffing his piss drunk friend.

Like the other officer listings, Master Trooper Michael Greene’s memorial page on Officer Down Memorial Page includes a ‘Reflections’ section for comments. Here’s what Scott Allen of Lebanon, Indiana, reflected on May 3, 2024.

I was a Senior at Lebanon High School in '93. I remember the funeral for Trooper Greene was held in the high school gym. They allowed students to attend. This was the first police funeral I had attended. I'll never forget seeing one entire side of the gym and the basketball court covered with officers from practically every state in the country. The line of patrol cars in the parking lot seemed endless. This was my first lesson of the brotherhood of law enforcement. Sadly, as a member of the media I have covered dozens of LEO funerals since. It always reminds me of the supreme sacrifice the men and women in blue make, every day. I thank Trooper Greene for standing in the gap that terrible day in 1993.

The earliest of the 71 total reflections are the lyrics to a song called ‘The Badge,’ which it says was written in 1999 by Sergeant David L. Bell of the Richland County Sheriff's Department in Columbia, South Carolina. Those were posted on October 23, 2007. But the earliest original reflection is by a police officer named Kurt Sinks from Lafayette, Indiana. Kurt Sinks posted on November 6, 2007

Mike,

I can still remember playing baseball at your house with your kids like it was yesterday. My dad still thinks of you daily and speaks of you often. We will never forget the ultimate sacrifice you made that terrible day. Each time I travel that stretch of I-65 I salute you and your heroism. Soon your cowardly killer will face the punishment he has so long deserved and we will continue to keep your family in our thoughts and prayers. Sleep easy brother and God Bless you. I look forward to seeing you again someday Mike.

Master Trooper Michael Greene’s killer was never executed. His name was Norman Timberlake and he died from emphysema complications while on death row, less than a week after Kurt Sinks posted his reflection. The guards found him unresponsive at head count, sitting upright with the television still on. The year before, a state psychiatrist diagnosed Norman Timberlake with chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

‘Well, look at it this way. If the courts deem leathel injection cruel and unusual then we can go back to firing squad! At least this murderer is now where he belongs... In HELL with the rest of them,’ a commenter on a forum called Officer.com reflected the same day.

i don’t feel like it’s necessary to look up how many people have died FOR ALL TIME in American prisons. i know whatever number i think up is probably less than the answer.

But this isn’t to compare or weight the worth of deaths or lives or LODDs. i guess i just mention it because numbers often reflect enough on their own. Like the number one, as in one memorial mile. And i keep thinking about all this Highway Gothic that stretches out for countless unnumbered miles.