The Oxnard Rampage : Slain Officer Described as Dedicated Cop : Victim: Jim O’Brien was always willing to risk his life, colleagues say. Residents remember him as caring man.

Oxnard Detective Jim O’Brien was always willing to put himself in the line of fire, fellow officers said Thursday.

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He was a lawman who thrived on the adrenaline rush of fighting crime, a dedicated cop who loved his job and who was committed to the ideal that neighborhoods should be gang- and graffiti-free.

So even in their shock and grief that O’Brien had been shot dead Thursday during a roadside gun battle, those who knew him best were not completely surprised that he died in the line of duty.

“He was all cop,” Police Chief Harold Hurtt said of the 14-year police veteran. “If there was somebody to be caught and be put in jail, he was right there.”

Added Police Department spokesman David Keith: “He was always first out on a call. Today he was first.”

O’Brien was the first Oxnard police officer killed in the line of duty since 1981. He was 35, married and the father of two children, Kathryn, 8, and Sean, 6.

He was born in Long Beach but spent most of his life in Ventura County. He graduated from Hueneme High School and attended Cal Lutheran University and Ventura College.

O’Brien started his public safety career in 1976 as a reserve firefighter for the county of Ventura. He joined the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in 1980 and a year later joined the Port Hueneme Police Department as a traffic investigator.

Four years later, O’Brien joined the Oxnard Police Department, where he was a member of the department’s honor guard, graffiti detail and anti-gang task force. He was an accomplished athlete who excelled in boxing and karate.

His fellow officers said he was well-liked within the department because of his friendly and outgoing manner.

Oxnard residents Thursday remembered O’Brien as a public servant who often spent his off-hours teaching neighborhood leaders how to fight crime.

“He cared about people,” said John Branthoover, who worked closely with O’Brien as part of an ongoing neighborhood patrol effort in the city’s Rio Lindo district. “He was one of those officers who in my view really gave a damn.”

That attitude extended to all areas of his police work.

In 1991, O’Brien was awarded the Ventura County Peace Officers Assn.’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor, for pulling a woman from the line of fire during a police shootout.

He was credited with reinvigorating Oxnard’s neighborhood watch patrols and for helping slow the spread of graffiti in the city. And he was active in the community, often lecturing schoolchildren on the dangers of drugs and gangs.

But his zeal for the job put him in the middle of some of Oxnard’s most publicized cases.

A little more than a year ago, the Ventura County district attorney cleared O’Brien of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of an unarmed homeless man who led police on a brief car chase. O’Brien told investigators that the man tried to run him down with his car.

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In 1990, the family of a boy attacked by a police dog belonging to O’Brien was awarded $58,840 in damages.

But few questioned O’Brien’s dedication to the job. On Thursday, when all available units were called to respond to the shooting at the Oxnard unemployment office, records clerk Diane Burns said she saw O’Brien run down the stairs from his second-floor office at the Oxnard police station.

“He loved his job,” Burns said.

Added Oxnard Police Cmdr. Joseph Munoz: “He was a very good man. An excellent street policeman. Very well-liked and loved his profession.”

Despite his passion for police work, O’Brien admitted during an interview last year that he had grown increasingly wary over the years of the dangers inherent in his profession.

“Everybody has a weapon. When I first started, they’d duke it out. Now they shoot it out,” he said at the time. “Not a day goes by where you don’t read about somebody getting thumped or shot or stabbed.

“I’m a lot more cautious than when I started,” he added. “It has to do with knowing danger.”

But his fellow police officers said O’Brien loved working the street. Hurtt said O’Brien was assigned his current position, monitoring gangs and graffiti taggers, partly because he was able to establish such a good rapport with those on the street.

Even some of the graffiti-taggers that O’Brien busted over the years said they were saddened by news of his death.

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“He caught me a lot, tagging on the boulevard and other places,” said a 17-year-old who identified herself only as Delphi. “He was just doing his job, putting his life on the line.”

An 18-year-old tagger, who goes by the name of Psalm, said he plans to paint a graffiti mural in O’Brien’s honor.

“He was talking to me the other day about his kids. About how he didn’t want them to grow up to be taggers,” the teen-ager said. “That was his job. Somebody had to take care of the city.”

Those who worked closely with O’Brien to bring law and order to the city of Oxnard said they will miss the colorful police veteran and the job he did.

“He is what I would have called an all-American-type police officer,” said Stewart Mimm, president of Oxnard’s Inter-Neighborhood Council. “He was a great guy with a real positive attitude. It’s too bad that we didn’t have more officers on the force like him.”