Salute to Slain Officer : Law enforcement: Plaque is dedicated to Garden Grove patrolman Howard Dallies Jr. at ceremony attended by hundreds. Search for his killer enters third month.

Law enforcement officers held a solemn ceremony Wednesday for patrolman Howard E. Dallies Jr., adding his name to a memorial for slain police officers while detectives began the third month of a search for his killer.

Amid tears and somber music at an afternoon ceremony, about 300 police officers and relatives gathered in the Civic Center’s Plaza of the Flags to dedicate a plaque to the 36-year-old officer who had been with the Garden Grove force for nine years when he died March 9 after a motorcyclist shot him during a nighttime traffic stop, police said. Apparently surprised by his assailant, Dallies did not remove his gun from the holster, police said.

“Each and every day, officers do their tasks and do them right” as they face danger, said Garden Grove Police Chief Stanley L. Knee. “My hope is that every police officer who wears a badge will live long enough to enjoy their grandkids, and I know if we work hard enough we can achieve that goal,” Knee said, making his comments during Peace Officer’s Memorial Week.

In Whittier on Wednesday, officials held a memorial ceremony to mark the deaths of nine law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County in the past year. Only in 1964 and 1978 did more Los Angeles County officers lose their lives, according to the plaques memorializing the 382 who have died on the job since 1857.

“Not gold, but only men and women can make a nation strong,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, paraphrasing the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, after taps was played during that ceremony.

Since Dallies’ death, Garden Grove police have publicized the case, passing out thousands of flyers, opening a toll-free phone line for tips, and dramatizing the case on television’s “America’s Most Wanted” program. Investigators have chased thousands of tips and leads but have yet to find a suspect.

Garden Grove Sgt. George Jaramillo said a task force created in late March to investigate the Dallies case “is going along smoothly, efficiently. . . . We’re confident we’re going to develop something that will lead to a suspect.”

At the same time, the detectives are anxious for more developments in the case, he said. “We haven’t gotten that big break yet,” Jaramillo said. “We still have questions on who and how. If we had some of the major answers, we would be sitting pretty.”

Garden Grove police said they are still struggling to put the pain of the slaying behind them.

“I think officers are still feeling the emotional loss,” Knee said. “I think we’re beginning to realize that Howard is gone forever,” Knee said of Dallies, who became the 31st officer to be killed while on duty in Orange County.

“It still is hard to take that, to see another officer go down,” said Garden Grove Officer Elias Vazquez. “It hurt me like everyone else.”

Vazquez said the slaying emphasized to the department that, for a police officer, death can come at any time.

“It’s a sign of the times,” he said. “It makes you more aware of what can happen.”

A vase of red and white carnations, a red candle and a button with Dallies’ name were clustered near a fence on Wednesday, marking the spot where the patrolman was shot in the 10100 block of Aldgate Avenue.

Neighbors along the quiet street rarely talk about the slaying now, but memories of the fatally wounded officer will stay with them forever, some of them said Wednesday.

“It took me a couple of weeks to where I wasn’t dwelling on it,” said Charles North, who rushed to the street in the early morning after hearing the pop of gunfire. “All of a sudden I’d have a downer, I’d start reviewing it all. . . . To see the uniform on the street with the blood is a real breakdown for everything that society stands for.”

“You don’t forget something like that, a man lying in his own blood,” said Jessie Brown, another resident who called for help for Dallies on the officer’s police radio. “The major thing is you feel sorry for the family.”

Mary Dallies, the patrolman’s widow, said she remains devastated by her husband’s death.

“My entire life is different,” said Dallies, who is on leave from her job as an Irvine police dispatcher. “I’m trying to find out what is normal now for myself and my children. . . . I’m looking for answers like everyone else and not finding them.”

Their sons--Christopher, 7, and Scott, 4--ask her daily about their father’s death, she said. “ ‘Why couldn’t the doctors stop Daddy’s bleeding? Why did that man shoot our Dad?’ ” they ask. “And all I can say is, ‘I don’t know,’ ” she said.

Since Officer Dallies’ slaying, California Highway Patrol Sgt. John L. Steel died April 23 after a head-on collision with a pickup truck driver near Irvine. Authorities could not prepare a plaque for Steel in time for Wednesday’s ceremony, so his name will be added to the memorial next year, authorities said.

Times staff writer Kenneth Reich contributed to this story.