Seen, Remembered, Honored: The 2026 Law Enforcement Hall of Fame Class
There is a moment at the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame induction ceremony that Megan Stockburger has watched repeat itself, year after year, with almost perfect consistency.
An officer walks onto the stage — sometimes hesitant, sometimes stoic — and accepts an award they likely told someone earlier that week they did not really need. Then, before the night is over, they find Megan. They pull her aside. And they tell her something along the lines of: I didn't realize how much I actually needed this.
That moment is why she built the Hall of Fame. And it is why, in 2026, ten inductees from across the country are being recognized for lives and careers that the broader world deserves to know more about.
"People notice," Megan says, "and those positive stories are out there instead of the negative that you hear in the media 24/7."
She has been fighting for those positive stories for nearly a decade. And she is nowhere near done.
Where It Started
The idea for the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame was not born in a boardroom or a policy meeting. It came from a conversation between a daughter and her father.
Megan Stockburger had built a career in event planning. Her co-founder, Adam Davenport, had been running an entrepreneurial hall of fame in northwest Ohio, and Megan had been helping him plan it. Meanwhile, her father — a law enforcement officer who would retire for the first time in 2013, then return to service because that is simply what men like him do — watched what she was building and asked a question that would change the direction of her work entirely.
"Why don't you do something like this for law enforcement?"
Megan assumed someone already was. She looked it up. Nobody was.
In 2017, she and Adam held their first induction ceremony in northwest Ohio, honoring local officers from Ohio and Southeast Michigan. It was small, personal, and meaningful. Then author and trainer Charles Remsberg — a man whose Street Survival books have shaped how law enforcement thinks about tactics — attended the event and told Megan what she needed to hear: "You really have to take this national."
So she did.
The organization held its first national ceremony in 2019. Then came 2020, a year that tested the organization's survival in ways Megan had not anticipated. The political climate turned hostile. Sponsorships evaporated. The threats and pressure were real. She paused the ceremony in 2020 and 2021, not from defeat, but from calculation. She used that time to rethink the structure and expand the mission — including beginning to explore how the organization could address officer mental health and family wellness.
By 2022, the Hall of Fame had become a nonprofit. By 2023, it had outgrown Ohio and moved its ceremony to Fort Worth, Texas, where law enforcement was welcomed rather than tolerated. The organization has now held the ceremony there for three years running, with a move to Lexington, Kentucky planned for the coming year.
Through all of it, the mission has remained the same: honor the officers who deserve to be honored, tell the stories that deserve to be told, and make sure those stories are not forgotten.
Why Recognition Matters
It is easy to dismiss awards in a profession built around humility. Officers are trained to act. Most would rather work a shift than stand on a stage. Many will tell you, sincerely, that they were just doing their job.
But Megan has seen enough to know that recognition does something words alone cannot. It tells an officer — and just as importantly, their family — that the work was seen. That the sacrifice was real. That someone outside the precinct walls took the time to say: we know what you gave, and we are not going to let it disappear.
"The Hall of Fame isn't just about recognizing the good work that all of you do," Megan explains. "We want to make sure that your family is supported. That things are tough, and it's okay to say that."
This is personal for her. She grew up in a law enforcement household. She knows what it is like to hear her father leave for a shift and feel the low hum of fear in her chest. She knows what shift work does to family dinner tables, to children, to marriages. She has watched her father carry things home from the job that nobody taught her how to talk about.
That experience shaped her belief that the Hall of Fame has to be more than a ceremony. It has to be a family.
"Once you come to this event, once you're a part of it, it's a family. We have your back — whatever you need."
And she means it structurally. The Hall of Fame is working toward building year-round support for officers and families, including connecting them with quality, law enforcement-trained therapists through anonymous, funded channels. The existing Employee Assistance Programs available to most officers, she notes, are often given to the lowest bidder — prioritizing cost over care, and leaving officers with little reason to seek help. The Hall of Fame wants to be a different kind of resource.
That work is still taking shape. But the direction is clear, and it starts with a simple belief: you cannot support law enforcement only in a crisis. You have to show up before that.
How the Hall of Fame Works
The selection process at the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame was built to protect the integrity of the awards. A peer-based judging panel — composed of current and retired law enforcement officers — receives the stories behind each nominee and evaluates them without knowing the identity of the nominee. They judge the act, not the name. Their votes come back, and the strongest stories rise.
The categories honor different expressions of service: valor, career achievement, distinction, sacrifice, the next generation, canine partners, training excellence, and those who gave everything and did not come home.
Every year, the ceremony also includes one of its most quietly powerful traditions. Portraits of fallen first responders — created by Pennsylvania law enforcement officer and artist Johnny Castro — are displayed on stage while a vocalist performs "Hallelujah." It is a moment that extends longer than you expect. It carries more weight than you are prepared for. And it resets the room for the ceremony that follows.
"There's not a dry eye that night," Megan says. "And what they say is, 'I don't need this.' And then they walk off that stage and say, 'I actually didn't realize how much I did need this.'"
The 2026 ceremony brought that truth into focus once again.
The 2026 Inductees: One Class, Many Forms of Service
What distinguishes the 2026 class is not just the depth of the individual stories — it is how different each story is from the next. Taken together, these ten inductees represent the full breadth of what law enforcement service can mean: the split-second decision, the quiet career, the sacrifice that cannot be undone, the innovation that changes a department, the survival that becomes a calling.
Terry L. Palmer Jr. | Founder's Award — City of Clarkesville Police Department, Georgia
On the evening of September 7, 2024, Officer Terry Palmer was responding to a welfare check at the Cameron Circle Apartments in Clarkesville, Georgia. The call involved an individual who had made suicidal threats. Standard enough, until it wasn't.
The subject had exchanged a handgun for an AR-15-style rifle. And while other officers began clearing the rear of the building — unaware that the armed man had quietly repositioned behind them — Officer Palmer, holding his position near the front entrance, saw what they could not see.
He had a fraction of a second to make a decision.
He moved toward the threat. He issued commands. When the subject turned the rifle on him, Palmer engaged, striking the subject and interrupting what almost certainly would have been an ambush on four officers from behind.
He then realized the geometry of the situation put both himself and an assisting deputy at risk from the fire now coming from multiple directions. He moved for cover. While doing so, he reached out, grabbed the deputy by the back of her ballistic vest, and physically pulled her to safety behind a corner wall.
The subject was incapacitated. No officers were killed.
"Every officer is trained to make split-second decisions every day," Palmer has said. "Giving recognition where recognition is due is very important to all of us in law enforcement."
His actions earned recognition from the Georgia State FOP, the attention of state and federal legislators, and now a place in the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame. The Founder's Award, chosen directly by the Hall's leadership, often carries a sense of particular resonance. This story earns it.
Bryan D. Kendi & Danny Sherbinsky | Courage in Service Award — City of Connellsville Police Department, Pennsylvania
On March 1, 2022, Corporal Bryan Kendi of the Connellsville City Police Department was let into a residence to assist with locating a woman who had been seen entering but never leaving. Within a few steps inside, he noticed blood on the man who answered the door. A firearm was visible on the floor of another room.
He was inside a murder scene. The killer was standing next to him.
Kendi stayed calm. He did not alert the subject to what he suspected. He moved through the house with the man, stalling, until he was able to get other officers to the scene without triggering a violent response.
When officers located the woman's body in the basement, they moved to take the subject into custody. The man resisted. He was brought to the ground — and managed to fire a shot from a concealed weapon.
In that moment, Kendi shoved Detective Lt. Thomas Patton off the subject before he and Sergeant Danny Sherbinsky — who remained in the fight alongside Kendi — used lethal force to end the threat.
Patton survived because Kendi pushed him clear. It is as simple and as profound as that.
Both Kendi and the retired Sergeant Sherbinsky, who stood with him in that basement and did not flinch, receive the Courage in Service Award. It belongs to both of them.
Greg Ferency | Courage in Service Award — Terre Haute PD / FBI Task Force Officer, Indiana (Posthumously)
Detective Greg Ferency gave his life on July 7, 2021, when he was ambushed outside the FBI's Terre Haute, Indiana field office. He was shot. Mortally wounded, he returned nine shots — alerting colleagues inside the building who were also intended targets, very likely saving their lives with his final act.
But to understand Greg Ferency's death, you first have to understand his life.
He spent thirty years in law enforcement. He was co-director of the International Tactical Officers Training Association, editor of SWAT Digest, and author of NarcOps, sharing the hard-won lessons from his years in undercover narcotics work. He trained departments across the country. He lectured on human trafficking, the Beslan school siege, and methamphetamine enforcement. He was a nationally recognized expert who treated both his knowledge and his colleagues with uncommon generosity.
He was also the first to volunteer to play the role of the "bad guy" in training scenarios — willingly taking the rubber bullets — because he believed realistic training saved real lives.
His sister, Shelley Klingerman, who founded the nonprofit Project Never Broken in his memory, notes that even people Greg arrested have since come forward to say he treated them with dignity and respect in their worst moments. He did not have to do that. He chose to.
The FBI Memorial Star recognized his bravery. The Hall of Fame honors his legacy. And as Shelley has made clear, the case against his killer has not yet gone to trial — an open wound that a family waits on every day.
Greg Ferency should not be forgotten. He will not be.
Autumn Likes | Young Officer Award — Independence Police Department, Ohio
Autumn Likes has been on the job six years. She is 27 years old. And by almost any measure, she has already built a career worth studying.
She earned her department's first drone certification. Then she did not just use it — she built the entire drone program from the ground up, developing policy, selecting technology, coordinating training, and eventually teaching other pilots. She transformed her department's capabilities and left a structure that will serve officers for years to come.
She is a field training officer who genuinely invests in the people she trains. She leads efforts to monitor compliance by registered sex offenders, protecting some of the community's most vulnerable people. She helps run a women's self-defense program. She stops to say hello at lemonade stands. She gives station tours. She shows up.
Her nomination describes her as raising morale across her shift, which tells you something important: she is not just a strong individual performer. She makes the people around her better.
The Young Officer Award exists to recognize the officers who represent the best of what the profession is becoming. Autumn Likes is a clear, compelling answer to the question of what that looks like.
K9 Preacher | K9 Hero Award — Maine State Police Tactical Team, Maine (Posthumously)
When the Maine State Police Tactical Team was deployed to a standoff involving a suspect who had already shot an Aroostook County deputy, K9 Preacher was among those who responded. The standoff lasted hours. When the suspect attempted to flee around 8 p.m., Preacher was deployed to apprehend him.
Preacher was shot in the abdomen. He did not survive.
His handler, Sergeant Jonathan Russell, was there for all of it.
There is no easy way to frame a K9's death. It is loss without the usual words of comfort, a sacrifice that cannot be narrated away. What can be said is that K9 Preacher ran toward the threat when others could not. He served his partner and his department with everything he had.
That is enough to earn a place in the Hall of Fame. It is more than enough to be remembered.
Julie Werhnyak | Trainer of the Year Award — Tempe Police Department (Retired) / Artemis Self-Defense LLC, Arizona
On March 3, 2015, Sergeant Julie Werhnyak responded to a welfare check with fellow Tempe Police Department officers. The call turned violent. She was stabbed in the neck, suffering a serious wound near her carotid artery. Her survival came down to training and sheer will.
She went on to finish her career at Tempe, retiring after twenty years of decorated service.
Then she got back to work.
Today, through Artemis Self-Defense LLC, Julie trains officers across the country to become more tactically sound — to be better prepared for the worst moments of their careers. She developed the Commanders ReSET Summit, bringing executive staff through firearms and tactical medical training alongside leadership development. She created the SOLE Summit, a once-in-a-lifetime intensive training experience for female officers at the lieutenant level and below, drawing participants from across the United States and Canada.
She is sought after because she knows what it means to be in a fight for your life with no guarantee of the outcome. She survived it. And she uses that knowledge not to build fear, but to build competence and confidence in the officers who will face their own worst day someday.
The Trainer of the Year Award honors someone who gives law enforcement its best chance. Julie Werhnyak has spent her post-retirement years doing exactly that.
Kyle R. Vowinkel | Scherer-Remsberg Lifetime Achievement Award — FBI (Retired), Florida
The Scherer-Remsberg Lifetime Achievement Award is named for two people who shaped the Hall of Fame's own history: Joel Scherer, Megan's father, who planted the original seed of this organization, and Charles Remsberg, whose encouragement pushed it national. The award it carries their names honors someone whose career reflects those same qualities of sustained courage and lasting impact.
Kyle Vowinkel's career did not lack for either.
A West Point graduate, he served five years as an Army Military Police officer before spending over two decades in the FBI. He spent three years on the FBI's Los Angeles SWAT team and more than eight years on the elite Hostage Rescue Team — one of the most demanding assignments in federal law enforcement. He deployed on hundreds of high-risk operations domestically and while embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In one of the most significant moments of his career, he helped orchestrate the rescue of a kidnapped five-year-old boy held captive in an underground bunker in Alabama. He received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Heroism — the Department of Justice's highest award for valor — for that work.
During the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt, Vowinkel played a central role in the tense final hours: he negotiated with the suspect concealed in a boat in Watertown, Massachusetts, ultimately persuading him to surrender peacefully, bringing a week of national trauma to a close without further bloodshed.
His wife, Ashley, submitted his nomination. She noted that he never called himself a hero. He said he was simply doing his job.
That is almost always what the heroes say.
Brandon Griffith | Distinguished Service Award — Pinal County Sheriff's Office / Griffith Blue Heart Nonprofit, Arizona
At 26 years old, while off duty, Deputy Brandon Griffith went into cardiac arrest. His heart stopped for over sixteen and a half minutes.
He was resuscitated. He fought back. He overcame the physical and institutional obstacles that came next — nearly forced into medical retirement, removed from his SWAT team assignment — and returned to full active duty with a defibrillator implanted in his chest.
He could have accepted what he had survived and moved on quietly. Instead, he started Griffith Blue Heart, a nonprofit dedicated to preparing, training, and equipping law enforcement to save lives in time-sensitive medical emergencies. The organization donates equipment, provides reality-based training, and has implemented systems of care that have saved lives across the country. He has passed legislation. He has guided first responders through their own medical crises back to active duty. He speaks at conferences, writes articles, and has turned his second chance into a full-time mission of service.
He is still a working deputy for the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.
Brandon Griffith died for more than sixteen minutes. What he has built since then suggests he understands exactly how much that second chance is worth.
Bill Walsh | Career Achievement Award — Dallas Police Department, Texas (Posthumously)
Lieutenant Bill Walsh spent 26 years at the Dallas Police Department. But to understand the scope of what he built, you have to look well beyond the department.
In 1988, he helped launch what would become the Crimes Against Children Conference. It started with 40 attendees. Today it draws more than 5,000 professionals from around the world each year, making it the largest event of its kind on earth. He co-founded the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, started the Dallas County Child Death Review Team, and co-authored the grant that helped establish one of the first ten Internet Crimes Against Children task forces in the United States.
Before Walsh's work, children who had been abused were often required to retell their trauma to multiple agencies in isolation from one another. Walsh changed that system. He made sure children told their story once, in a safe environment, while professionals from law enforcement, child protective services, medicine, and prosecution worked together around that child rather than making the child navigate each of them separately.
He trained professionals on five continents. He partnered with the FBI, Interpol, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He received the FBI Director's Community Leadership Award and a Crime Victims Service Award from Attorney General Janet Reno.
He was also the kind of man who built cardboard rocket ships for his grandchildren and handmade a coffee carrier for his daughter during conference week. His grandchildren called him "Gruber" — short for Grandpa Uber — because he was always carting them around.
Bill Walsh passed away in January 2024. He did not live to see just how appreciated he was.
That fact, Megan notes, stays with her.
"Seeing that come full circle for his family — his entire team showed up for him — was a big moment for me," she says. "It's a reminder of how important it is to honor our inductees while they're still with us, so they know how much they are appreciated."
His daughter, Dianna Smoot, now carries on his legacy as the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center's Chief Education and Training Officer — helping run the very conference her father founded. The mission did not stop with him. It grew.
Cody Holte | Never Forgotten Award — Grand Forks Police Department, North Dakota (Posthumously)
On May 27, 2020, Grand Forks County Sheriff's deputies were attempting to serve eviction paperwork when the subject opened fire from his barricaded position, shooting his own mother with an AK-74-style rifle.
Officer Cody Holte heard the call for help and responded without hesitation. He entered the apartment and took a position of cover. He was struck by gunfire from the same suspect. He did not survive.
Cody Holte had been with the Grand Forks Police Department for three years. He was posthumously awarded both the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor departmental awards. His community was devastated, and the outpouring of support at his funeral reflected exactly the kind of officer he had been.
The Never Forgotten Award carries the most straightforward of the Hall of Fame's promises: that some names will not slip quietly into absence. That a young officer who ran toward danger and paid for it with his life will be remembered — not just by his department, not just by his family, but by people who never met him and now know something important about who he was.
His name is Cody Holte. He was a police officer. He answered the call.
A Place Worth Showing Up To
The induction ceremony itself has grown into something more than an awards dinner. It begins with a VIP evening the night before — a smaller, more personal gathering where honorees, families, sponsors, and supporters can connect without the formality of a stage. The ceremony the following day includes a cocktail hour, dinner, and then the program, which is punctuated by the moment with Johnny Castro's portraits and the Hallelujah performance before the Never Forgotten recognition.
Megan describes the atmosphere as something that has to be experienced to fully understand.
"You become family once you're a part of it," she says. "You're not a sponsor or an officer. You're just family."
The Hall of Fame is also building toward a permanent physical home. A temporary Wall of Fame is being installed at the Galls headquarters, giving families who could not attend the ceremony a place to visit and see the recognition their loved one received. The long-term vision is a brick-and-mortar location in Washington, D.C., near or connected to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial — a permanent place where the stories of inductees can be visited, revisited, and passed down.
That place does not exist yet. But Megan is building toward it, the same way she has built everything else: steadily, independently, and with the people the Hall of Fame exists to serve at the center of every decision.
Recognized by Those Who Stand with Them
Thin Blue Line USA is proud to recognize the 2026 National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame inductees. This year, Thin Blue Line USA supported the Hall of Fame by providing custom challenge coins for each honoree, custom memorial bracelets, and partnership support that Megan describes as rooted in something deeper than a business arrangement.
"Thin Blue Line USA has proven that they look at their customer base as a family and not just a client," she says. "I feel really good about this partnership and what we can do together."
The challenge coins, designed with the detail and weight that Thin Blue Line USA's work is known for, were engraved personally for each inductee — a tangible piece of their recognition to carry with them long after the ceremony ends.
Say the Names. Tell the Stories.
Terry Palmer saw the threat when others couldn't and moved toward it. Bryan Kendi and Danny Sherbinsky held steady inside a murder scene and saved a colleague's life. Greg Ferency ran out of time but not out of courage. Autumn Likes is building the future of her department one program at a time. K9 Preacher ran toward danger and did not come back. Julie Werhnyak survived the worst and turned it into a reason to protect others. Kyle Vowinkel spent decades serving in places most of us will never see, doing things most of us will never know about. Brandon Griffith died for sixteen minutes and has been giving back ever since. Bill Walsh changed how the country protects its children. Cody Holte answered one last call.
These are the 2026 inductees of the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame. They represent valor, innovation, resilience, sacrifice, and a commitment to service that does not have a clean ending point. They represent what law enforcement, at its best, looks like.
"This Hall of Fame means everything to me," Megan says. "We need people to know it exists. Nominate an officer. Spread the word so that we can continue to honor and share those positive stories."
She is right that these stories need to be shared. They need to be told by people who understand what it means to wear a badge and by people who never have but benefit every day from those who do.
If you know an officer whose story deserves to be honored, visit nationalleohalloffame.com and nominate them. The next class is waiting to be recognized.
They deserve to be seen. They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be honored.
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