Emotional Trey Gowdy pays tribute to law enforcement as Capitol Police officer Sicknick laid to rest

"FOX News Primetime" host Trey Gowdy devoted the final few moments of Wednesday's show to paying tribute to law enforcement officers across the country on the day U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was laid to rest. 

"There are a lot of hard jobs in our country, but I can't imagine anything harder than being a police officer," said Gowdy, a former state and federal prosecutor in South Carolina. The hours are long, the pay is not good. The job is harder on your family. 

"There are physical dangers, but there is also an emotional price to pay," the host added. "When you spend most of your time investigating acts of depravity and evil, you get the proportions misaligned in your own mind. Sometimes when depravity is all you see, you think it is all that exist ... You see the crime scene photos you can't get out of your mind. You see the acts of violence committed against children and other vulnerable people. You are expected to run toward danger when every instinct tells us to run away from danger. You are lied to, you are assaulted, and then everything you did or did not do is scrutinized. You make hard decisions, sometimes split-second decisions, and then the people judging those decisions can take weeks and months to decide whether or not you made the right call."

Gowdy later recalled prosecuting a murder case in his home state.

"The cop in that case was outstanding. It was a tough, emotional case, but he was great. He was professional and he was compassionate. And I wanted to tell him what a great job he had done. But the verdict came back and the sentencing hearing was about to begin, and he he slipped out of the back of the courtroom. 'It's OK,' I thought to myself, 'I'll see him again and I'll make sure he knows what a great job he did.' He was young and he was talented and he had a bright future. So I knew that I would see him again ...

"But the next time I saw him," a visibly emotional Gowdy recounted, "he was lying on the side of a road, shot to death while serving a warrant. I waited too late."

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Invoking Sicknick's death following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the murder of two FBI agents in South Florida Tuesday, Gowdy exhorted viewers to "do a better job of appreciating cops and the job they do before it's too late.

"We should have high expectations of them, but they should have high expectations of us, too," he concluded. "And one of those expectations? Just to simply say thank you while they're still able to hear us. So every law enforcement officer in the country, who can still hear us: Thank you for your service.