Ex-LAPD Officer, New to Simi Valley, Slain on Duty

A former Los Angeles police officer who joined the Simi Valley police force just months ago for better pay was shot to death Friday after answering a distress call from a man threatening to kill himself.

Investigators said Officer Michael Clark was mortally wounded during a brief gunfight with the despondent man, who was barricaded in his home. Clark’s fellow officers used an armored vehicle to crash through a back-yard fence and drag him to a patrol car. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died about two hours later.

A standoff with the suspect ended about 7 p.m. when police pelted the home with more than a dozen tear-gas canisters and stormed inside. Daniel Allan Tuffree, 48, was arrested and treated for wounds apparently suffered in the gun-battle with Clark. Tuffree later was booked on suspicion of murder.

Clark, 28, who had served as a patrol officer at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division in the San Fernando Valley, was remembered by colleagues there as a tough cop whose major concern after leaving Los Angeles was that there would be relatively little action on a smaller force.

“I wish I had a station full of guys like him,” said LAPD Sgt. Bill Thomas, who worked with Clark during his 2 1/2-year-stint at Devonshire. “He kind of reminded me of the guys who were on the job when I came on, and that was 27 years ago. A no-nonsense, big, husky guy.”

Thomas said Clark left the LAPD for Simi Valley because the Ventura County department offered better pay and benefits. The downside for Clark, Thomas said, was that there was less action in the Simi Valley department.

“It was very difficult for him to go to that smaller department,” Thomas said. “It’s unreal--to leave here and go to Simi Valley, a smaller, slower Police Department, and end up their first casualty.”

*

Police said Tuffree, believed by neighbors to be a gym teacher at a school in Chatsworth, had called his insurance company about 1 p.m. Friday, telling agents that he was about to commit suicide. Company officials immediately notified Simi Valley police, who dispatched Clark and two other officers to the scene.

The officers knocked on the front door, and when no one answered, Clark went to the back yard. At that moment, gunfire exploded from the house and Clark returned the fire, witnesses said.

“I had just come outside and was walking across the street when I heard the shots,” said Jack Packenham, who lives across the street. “I hit the ground immediately. I could see bullets flying through the fence.”

Officers used their armored van to pull Clark from the line of fire and cordoned off the neighborhood, herding residents out of harm’s way. A special weapons squad secured the area while police tried without success to talk Tuffree out of the home.

After four hours, police launched tear-gas canisters inside the house. Shifting winds dispersed some of the gas through the neighborhood, forcing about 20 officers to retreat. Several neighbors and reporters were overcome by the gas, and medical crews provided water to flush smarting eyes.

About 7 p.m., a team of special weapons officers lobbed concussion grenades into the house and dashed inside, confronting Tuffree and subduing him without further gunfire. The naked, wounded suspect was transported to Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

Tuffree suffered “multiple gunshot wounds, but none too serious,” according to a paramedic.

Investigators were uncertain what prompted the deadly attack on Clark.

Neighbors said Tuffree has a history of making trouble in the neighborhood, throwing rocks at some homes and firing weapons into the air.

“The man has been kind of a mischief-maker,” said Margaret Davidson, who lives about six houses away.

The killing is the first fatal shooting of a police officer in Simi Valley, perennially ranked by the FBI as one of the safest cities in the nation.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Police Sgt. Bob Gardner said.

The LAPD’s Sgt. Thomas said he and Clark occasionally had spoken about the hazards of the job, but they never dwelt on it.

“He was very officer-safety conscious . . . he made a lot of arrests,” Thomas said. “He was very hard-working, aggressive. If anybody needed backup or anything in the field, he was one of the first guys there.”

Thomas said Clark had a wife and 4-month-old child, who live in Moorpark in Ventura County.

*

“Clark had an outstanding ability to do the job and deal with citizens,” said LAPD Sgt. Kirk Wilder, who also supervised the slain officer during his days on patrol in Granada Hills.

“He worked hard, and he had a lot of expertise. He was an ex-Marine with a lot of dedication to the job and the people he was serving in the community,” Wilder added.

“The saddest part is that he just came to our department to get away from L.A.,” a tearful Simi Valley Councilwoman Sandi Webb said.

Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo, Daryl Kelley, Carlos V. Lozano, Eric Malnic, Nicholas Riccardi, Eric Wahlgren and Tracy Wilson and correspondents Paul Elias, Catherine Saillant and Ira Stoll contributed to this story.