Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : CITIES : Slain Officers Remembered in New Memorial

The families clutched red roses, then solemnly laid them on bronze plaques in the shadows of white uprights that portrayed police officers at work. The plaques bore the names of their family members who, as officers of the law, were killed in action.

In a somber ceremony that remembered 23 slain officers, the Orange County Peace Officers Memorial was dedicated last week.

The memorial, located in the Civic Center in Santa Ana, consists of three uprights and 23 plaques set in granite.

One of the uprights depicts a lone rider on horseback, in memory of the county’s first officer killed in the line of duty, Robert Squires, an undersheriff cut down in a shoot-out in 1912 at Tomato Springs in the foothills near El Toro.

The crowd, filled with family members, 24 police chiefs, the county sheriff and hundreds of uniformed officers, choked with emotion as “Amazing Grace” was played on the bagpipes.

“That was something special,” said Lt. Daniel J. Spratt of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

It was a mixture of joy and sadness for the family of Donald F. Reed, a 27-year-old Garden Grove police officer who was killed June 7, 1980. He was the last officer killed in Orange County.

“It was a lovely ceremony, just lovely,” said his mother, Rita Reed of Riverside.

The idea for the memorial had been kicking around various police agencies for years when the Sheriff’s Advisory Council decided a few months ago to raise the $80,000 needed.

One of the largest turnouts was for Jerry S. Hatch, a 23-year-old Fullerton officer killed on duty when a drunk driver struck him as he loaded equipment into his car.

Sixteen Hatch family members attended, including the officer’s daughter, Audrey, 14, who was 2 years old when her father was killed.

“She has plenty of pictures of him, and she’s heard plenty of stories,” said Hatch’s widow, who traveled with her daughter from Arizona for the ceremony.