2,000 Bid Farewell to Slain Police Officer : Funeral: Colleagues from throughout the state mourn Michael Clark.

More than 2,000 mourners turned out Wednesday to bid farewell to slain Simi Valley Police Officer Michael Frederick Clark, who was gunned down last week as he tried to calm a suicidal man.

Clark’s colleagues from Simi Valley and former fellow officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division in the San Fernando Valley packed St. Jude’s Catholic Church to overflowing.

And a rumbling cortege of hundreds of police cruisers and motorcycles from as far away as Lodi bore him to his grave.

“You walk among these graves, and you realize we’re all on borrowed time,” Simi Valley Police Sgt. John Wilcox said somberly. “For us all to come like this is a way of offering brotherly love among police officers. Every person here knows it could happen to them.”

Clark’s death rested heavily on officers from the Devonshire Division as well, where Clark worked for six years before moving to Simi Valley just months ago.

“He was very well-liked,” LAPD Officer Gary Hansen said. “A lot of officers at the station are around his age, and this has probably been the hardest on them.”

Devonshire Officer Rebecca Smalling said she was devastated by Clark’s death.

“I’ve lost a good friend,” said Smalling, who graduated from the police academy with Clark. “I’m just so sad.”

LAPD Sgt. Bob McDonald remembered working with Clark when the officer was a rookie fresh out of the academy.

“I really enjoyed working with him. He was such an enthusiastic guy,” McDonald said. “It’s so ironic he came to Simi Valley to get away from L.A., and then he died there.”

During the funeral service at St. Jude’s, childhood friends and the fellow Simi Valley officers who saw Clark die eulogized the 28-year-old officer, whose death last Friday left his 5-month-old son, Bayley, fatherless and his high school sweetheart, Jenifer, a widow.

A choir sang. The tang of burning incense curled through the packed church.

And colleagues and kin sniffed back tears as Msgr. Thomas O’Connell remembered Michael Clark as “a giant to anyone lucky enough to know him . . . a mountain of a man dedicated to decency and fairness.”

Clark had transferred from the rougher streets of LAPD’s Devonshire Division to Simi Valley only last May, seeking a safer lifestyle for his family.

He was called out Friday to check on the well-being of a reportedly suicidal social studies teacher named Daniel Allan Tuffree, 48.

And as Clark and partners Michael Pearce and Sgt. Tony Anzilotti tried to calm him down, Tuffree opened fire, hitting Clark in the arm and the back, police said. Clark returned fire as he went down, but he later died of his wounds. Tuffree, wounded during the gunfight, was charged with murder and six other counts Tuesday.

During the funeral service, Anzilotti told the gathering: “Officer Clark saved my life, as well as the life of Officer Pearce on Aug. 4, 1995. . . . Michael Clark was a cop in every sense of the word.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, whose arrival was stalled 50 minutes by an air-traffic control computer outage, said that Clark “is in distinguished company now. Sad, but distinguished.

“This year alone across California, 10 officers have lost their lives in the line of duty, brave men who answered the call of duty and made the ultimate sacrifice,” Wilson said.

“People don’t understand that officers are simply trying to maintain the peace, and it’s getting harder and harder every day,” said former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates.

Then, to the plaintive skirl of bagpipes, pallbearers ushered Clark’s casket to the hearse, which was escorted to Valley Oaks Memorial Park by a motorcade of 258 police cars and 160 motorcycle cops.

Msgr. O’Connell prayed in sorrowful tones, his deep voice carrying the rhythm of his Irish homeland.

“Our brother Michael is asleep here in peace until you awake him in glory,” he said in prayer.

At the sad notes of “Taps,” trumpeted by Paul Mole of Simi Valley and LAPD Sgt. Raymond Foster, many mourners broke down and cried openly.

Representatives from the Simi Valley Police Department, the U.S. Marine Corps, the California Highway Patrol and the office of Gov. Wilson each presented Jenifer Clark with a carefully folded flag.

After a 21-gun salute from a Marine Corps honor guard based at Port Hueneme, a long line of well-wishers formed to pay respects to Jenifer Clark and the family.

The policeman’s widow accepted kisses, hugs and kind words from the mourners, and when it was over, she sank into a chair where she had listened to the ceremony, 10 feet away from the body of her husband.

She had cried as the casket was loaded into the hearse back at the church, then regained her composure.

After the burial ceremony was completed--after the riderless horse had been led away and the Marine Corps honor guard dispersed--Jenifer Clark broke down again over the loss of the husband she had called “the only man I ever loved.”

When most of the crowd was gone, she picked a long-stemmed red rose from one of the hundreds that lay on the ground nearby. She placed the rose on the coffin and knelt in front, then put her face against the side of the silver metal box and wept.

Michael Clark’s uncle and father knelt beside her. Frederick Clark cried, pounding softly on his son’s casket with his right hand as he held his face with his left.

Nearly an hour after the ceremony had ended, the family rose and walked quietly down the hill to the waiting limousines. Minutes later, cemetery workers attached chains to the coffin and slowly lowered Michael Frederick Clark into his grave.

Times staff writers Mary F. Pols and Julie Tamaki and correspondent Andrew D. Blechman contributed to this article.