'To honour the police officers who have served the people of Lismore and in memory of those officers who have lost their lives in the course of their duty'.

Those words are written on the Lismore Police Memorial on Molesworth Street.

Yesterday, the Rotary Club of Summerland Sunrise, representatives from Janelle Saffin and Kevin Hogan's office and Sergeant Ed Howarth from the Lismore Police Station laid flowers at the base of the memorial to pay respect to the two police officers who were killed in the line of duty in Porepunkah, Victoria.

59-year-old Detective Neal Thompson and 35-year-old Senior Constable Vadim De Waart had travelled to the rural property, north-east of Melbourne, alongside eight colleagues to execute a search warrant. Another officer remains in hospital after being shot in the lower body.

Police say the suspect, local man Desmond Freeman, 56, is heavily armed and still at large.

Richmond Police District Commander, Superintendent David Roptell said, “Earlier today, officers attached to Richmond Police District attended a memorial in Lismore to pay respect to the officers in Victoria who lost their lives in the line of duty. Our thoughts are with their families, friends, policing colleagues and the wider community as they navigate this difficult time.”

Rotary's Ken Arnett encouraged the rest of the community to lay flowers at the memorial in tribute to the two dead officers.

POLICE MEMORIAL HISTORY

The Lismore Police Memorial was officially unveiled on 23 July 2003 by the Honourable John Watkins MP, NSW Minister for Police.

Ken Arnett had noticed there was a memorial for the many soldiers who fought and died in all Australian wars, but nothing for our police officers who died in the line of duty.

"On the 29th of September in about 1998 or 1999, there was a bunch of coppers over here in the Memorial Gardens all standing around a Padre. I thought, what is going on over there? So I went over and had a listen, and found out that the 29th of September is their Memorial Day. And I looked around that park over there and saw a monument for the Boer War, World War Two, World War One, Vietnam, a whole lot more, but nothing for the coppers.

"It struck my mind that we should do something about this. So, the Reverend Graham Davis was working in council in those days, and I came up with this site to put up a memorial, and it took us two or three years to get it done."

The memorial was paid for by the people of Lismore (half) and the state and federal governments.