And at the end of seven days, the word of the LORD came to me: If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand.

But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.”

Ezekiel 3:16-21, ESV

Happy, Texas, the place that I have called home for the past 26 years, just lost one of her greatest watchman. His name was Joe Bill, and he was the epitome of what a police officer should be. I was greatly blessed to have Joe Bill as my friend. 

Joe Bill was 6'3" tall, had a bass voice that could nearly split concrete, and served in just about every type of law enforcement that you could imagine. From a city police officer (patrol and motor cycle), to Sheriff's deputy, to University Campus Police, to Child Protective Services and, finally, to a volunteer Chief of Police for Happy, where he refused to take any pay, Joe Bill did it all.

And he did it well.

I heard story after story from first hand accounts how Joe Bill served with compassion. When he caught someone who should not have had alcohol with alcohol, he would make them pour it out. Then he would give them a talk about safety, and then he would tell them something along the lines that there better not be a second time. And there rarely was. I heard people talk about how Joe Bill had pulled them over with just a warning. To my knowledge, in all the years he served in Happy, he never gave a ticket. It's not that they didn't deserve one, and it's not that Happy couldn't have used the revenue. It was simply that he did not want to ruin somebody's day, or raise their insurance unnecessarily.

Most of all, he just wanted people to be safe.

I remember visiting with him about his work with Child Protective Services. Knowing how he felt about those who would abuse children, combined with his size and strength, and the fact that no one would have blamed him had he broken every bone in the body of the one who had abused the child, I wondered how he could show the restraint that he did. Make no mistake, this was one area where he did not feel that someone deserved a second chance to repeat the crime that brought Joe Bill into their life. It was just that he did not want to risk the health of that child by doing anything that would allow a criminal of that magnitude of evil to go free.

As in everything he did, Joe Bill just wanted everyone to be kept safe, especially children.

His oldest grand daughter graduated from police academy recently. Joe Bill pinned the badge on her at her induction ceremony. He told her that she needed to conduct her public service by the book... and then he gave her the book that she was to go by and to serve by... the Bible! And he told her the verse in the Bible that meant so much to him. It is found in Matthew 5:9. In it, Jesus simply states, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

Joe Bill Dempsey recently had two occasions where the people of our town were able to express in a small way the appreciation they had for he and his wife Glinda As every law enforcement person knows, they could not do half of what they do without the support of their families, and especially their spouses. Joe Bill had the best in that category (family and wife). After being so honored - first at the school and then at the church -, against his will I should add, he wrote a thank you note to the church and to the community. He ended it by saying that he hoped someday to be a watchman over those streets of gold.

Joe Bill, lived his life as a watchman. He lived to warn the righteous and the wicked in hopes that they might repent and thereby be kept safe. In the end, Joe Bill did his job as well as any man I have ever known. I wonder who will now step up and take over the work that he devoted his life to so beautifully...