1,000 Run in LAPD Memorial Relay

More than 1,000 runners and their families gathered Saturday at Chatsworth Park South for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Memorial Relay Race, held primarily to honor officers killed in the line of duty.

“This is the biggest turnout we’ve had,” Police Chief Daryl Gates said of the eighth annual event. “It’s very gratifying.”

Gates, who at 59 keeps in shape by running several miles a week, ran a 5-kilometer leg for one of the 168 five-man relay teams that raced 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) along a course leading from the park through the streets of Chatsworth.

“We do this to try to encourage the concept of the LAPD as one big family,” said Gates, “and to remember the officers who died not only in the past year, but previous years as well.”

It is important not only to remember fallen LAPD officers, Gates said, but all law enforcement officers.

Among those LAPD officers who died recently were Arleigh McCree, who headed the department’s bomb squad, and his partner, Ronald Ball. Both were killed in North Hollywood in February while attempting to disarm a pipe bomb. Detective Thomas C. Williams was gunned down last October while picking up his 6-year-old son at a Canoga Park church child-care center after testifying in a robbery case.