The Law Enforcement Memorial will be held this year on Thursday May 17, 2012. The program will start at 11:30 a.m. at the Memorial site located at 600 Market Street adjacent to the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.

This program is dedicated to honor our law enforcement heroes who have died in the line of duty and for those who continue to serve and protect. Acts of heroism and valor are performed every day by the law enforcement officers who serve the citizens of Hamilton County. These men and women have chosen a career on the front line and willingly place themselves in harm’s way. It takes a brave person to run toward danger when everyone else is running away.

Our law enforcement family and citizens will be able to witness something new this year at the Memorial site. We will be using a commercial-grade, 300mW blue laser light projector, the kind often used in large concert venues and during this week’s Police Week services in Washington DC.

The laser will be located in the old Blue Cross Blue Shield building across the street and will be projected at the Memorial each evening during next week’s Police Week. This location is made possible to the sheriff’s office by the building owner, Sanjana Savant, and the engineering firm of Mesa Associates, Inc.

Additional information on our blue laser light:

This blue laser is designed to produce shapes, moving patterns, and text over large distances. The laser is not in fact blue, but appears to the eye as violet, a color for which a human eye has a very limited sensitivity. When pointed at many white objects, such as white paper or white clothes which have been washed in certain washing powders, the visual appearance of the laser changes from violet to blue due to the fluorescence from brightening dyes.

Until the late 1990s, when blue semi-conductor lasers were developed, blue lasers were large and expensive gas laser instruments which relied on a complex set of rare gas mixtures, high power sources, and strong cooling.

Today, blue lasers use a sapphire surface covered with a layer of gallium nitride, and are commonly used in all manner of commercial and household uses, most notably in Blu-Ray players.