Memorial to Richard T. Conklin

End of Watch: June 5, 1938
Rank: Officer, Badge No. N/A
Age: N/A
Years of Service: N/A
Location of Death: Piney Branch and Butternut Street, NW

Circumstance:

Officer Conklin, a motorman, skidded on a street car track, throwing him 35 feet from his bike. He died soon after reaching the hospital.  This was only two blocks from where Officer Wessells was killed one month earlier.

Biography:

N/A

Articles from the Washington Post – transcribed by Dave Richardson, MPD/Ret.
THE DEATH OF OFFICER RICHARD T. CONKLIN
WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE DATED JUNE 6, 1938, PAGE X1

POLICEMAN HURLED 25 FT. WHEN CYCLE UPSETS
Motorcycle Patrolman Richard T. Conklin, attached to the Sixth Precinct, was killed yesterday when his motorcycle skidded on a car track and overturned on Georgia Avenue near Butternut Street, NW, two blocks from where Motorcycle Patrolman Ernest T. Wessells was killed when his machine collided with a street car April 23.

Hurled 35 feet, Conklin was rushed in a taxicab to Walter Reed Hospital by Patrolman Bruce Manners, also of the Sixth Precinct, who saw the crash. Conklin died half an hour after reaching the hospital.

His death was the thirty-fifth attributed to traffic in Washington this year.

Precinct station flags will fly at half-staff until after the funeral, arrangements for which have not been completed.

In November, 1928, Conklin achieved brief renown when he battled a mob in the 1900 block Fourteenth Street and retained a colored prisoner whom several hundred persons attempted to rescue.