This chapter examines the heavy responsibility of police leaders when an officer is killed in the line of duty. Using the killing of Norwegian police officer Markus Botnen in December 2024 as a point of departure, it analyzes how leadership responses to such tragedies are not only operational but also cultural and symbolic. The chapter draws on the GLOBE project’s framework of cultural dimensions and on Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio, and Cavarretta’s (2009) theory of leadership in extreme contexts. In addition, it incorporates recent research on Scandinavian senior police executives (Glomseth & Boe, 2025), highlighting the role of elite police leadership in democratic societies. The chapter additionally reveals how crises of this kind create unique demands for leaders, requiring them to balance decisiveness with empathy, manage public trust under intense media scrutiny, and serve as meaning-makers for their organizations. Police leadership in these situations functions both as crisis management and as cultural stewardship, shaping organizational identity and values through ritualization, communication, and symbolic action. It also argues that senior police executives must integrate leadership, management, and governance, embodying public value, and democratic legitimacy.