Key West The Newspaper

Key West Police Lt. Areaka Jewell and Officer Steve Torrence last night presented the entire City Commission and City Manager Jim Scholl with special pink badges in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Officer Torrence gave a special shout out to Historic Tours of America and Island Dental for sponsoring this awareness campaign. He also thanked all of the officers who are not only wearing the badge in support of the campaign, but have donated to the cause. All of the money raised in this campaign will be donated to the Cancer Foundation of the Florida Keys, a local non-profit that funnels all of its funds into assisting members of the Keys community who are facing cancer.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. Nationwide, an estimated 231,840 new cases of invasive female breast cancer were diagnosed in the past year and about 40,290 will die from the disease. In addition, African American women are more likely to die from breast cancer than women of all other races. But women are not the only victims of this disease. An estimated 2,350 cases of male breast cancer were diagnosed in 2016 and about 440 men will die of the disease.