‘Walking in Footsteps of Heroes’ : Compton: Hundreds of friends, family members and co-workers remember slain policeman Kevin Michael Burrell as a ‘gentle giant’ committed to his community.

Mourners overflowed a Compton church Monday as hundreds of friends, relatives and fellow officers came to pay their last respects to one of two police officers shot to death in that city last week.

Kevin Michael Burrell, 29, and his partner, James MacDonald, 23, were killed last Monday after they stopped two suspects in a late-model, red Chevrolet pickup at Rosecrans and Dwight avenues.

Witnesses told investigators that the officers were searching the two suspects when at least one began firing a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. After the wounded officers fell to the ground, they were shot in the head, police said.

Burrell--who stood 6 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed nearly 300 pounds--was eulogized at the Double Rock Baptist Church as a “gentle giant” committed to his community and law enforcement.

“If our community’s protectors cannot be safe, and our citizens cannot be safe, then none of us can be safe,” Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor told mourners--who included Gov. Pete Wilson, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block and Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams. “It is absolutely necessary that we do something to curb the proliferation of firearms in our society.”

Taylor recalled how Burrell came down with chicken pox two weeks before he was scheduled to graduate from the Police Academy. He had to “recycle”--repeat the program.

“All of us in law enforcement know how stressful (the academy) can be,” Taylor said. “But there was a drive in this young man to succeed.”

Burrell completed his training and joined the force in July, 1988.

Taylor described Burrell as a “giant of a man, gentle of heart” who volunteered to coach basketball and donated money to the program “so that young people in this community could have a chance.”

A basketball standout at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, Burrell grew up in Compton, where in his teens he became determined to be a police officer.

Officers from throughout the state stood in formation outside the church and filled nearby neighborhoods with patrol cars and motorcycles. Compton City Hall was closed Monday in honor of Burrell and MacDonald.

At Monday’s services, frequently punctuated by spirited gospel music and applause, Compton Officer Jasper Jackson outlined the painful sequence that officers experience when one of their own falls in the line of duty--the news reports, the sorrow, the graveside tears.

At each officer’s funeral, he said, “we stood wondering, who would be next? Would it be you, me or would it be our partner?”

They silently pray that each time will be the last, he said, but “we know that again and again we will come back--feeling the pain, standing together in honor to another fallen law enforcement officer.”

And officers carry on with their heads held high, Jackson said, because “we will be walking in the footsteps of heroes.”

Wilson, who also attended MacDonald’s funeral in Santa Rosa on Saturday, described how his grandfather was a young police officer killed in Chicago when Wilson’s mother was only 18 months old.

“There are no words that can replace a son,” he said to Burrell’s parents. “But you have my thanks and my admiration. This church is filled with love, gratitude and pride. Kevin Burrell has been taken from us, but his memory will survive.”

The Rev. Calvin Crescent, Burrell’s childhood friend and college roommate, choked on his tears several times before he recalled several anecdotes illustrating the officer’s playful side.

When classmates would try to arrange dates for Burrell, he turned them down. It turned out that he had already met the woman of his dreams--a Compton police sergeant.

His friends should not have been surprised, Crescent said. Burrell wore his police explorer badge, carried a police flashlight and listened incessantly to his beloved police scanner.

“He called me his 5150 (the California statute referring to suspects with psychological problems),” Crescent said.

When Crescent was driven to distraction by the constant crackling of the police scanner in their room, he threw Burrell’s scanner across the room.

“That was the wrong thing to do,” Crescent said. “Kevin picked me up and tossed me across the room.”

Burrell was a counselor to young boys--an officer who recognized that “our children are worth saving,” said his pastor, the Rev. Lonnie Dawson of Los Angeles’ New Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. “He wanted to change the image of Compton. Now it becomes our responsibility to do the kinds of things that will present a different picture.

“We want to see some kind of control on the guns. There are too many guns, and the fruit of that abundance will always produce tragedy.”

Outside the church, nine police helicopters flew in formation over the church to honor the slain officer. Burrell’s friends who were unable to get inside stood in clutches at service stations, mini-markets and in an intersection closed to traffic.

The killing of Burrell and MacDonald is “a wake-up call to the community,” said James Knox, 35, a Compton city employee.

“I want to see the killers caught,” said Willie Figures, who was standing with Knox. “Someone has to know something. Someone had to see it.”

Rodney Whitney, 27, said he had known Burrell since high school and that the killings had left “a lot of people angry.”

“A lot of people who don’t like police knew Kevin and liked him. He was fair,” he said.