2,000 Bid Farewell to Slain Simi Police Officer : Funeral: Colleagues from throughout the state are among those at services for Michael Frederick 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.”

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. “There is no greater act of valor, nor truer test of character than pinning on the badge each day to be a street cop.”

Ian Jones remembered his former fellow Marine as a selfless, hard-working man “who would give you the shirt off his back.

“There was a time in my life when I was in need and I had no place to stay,” Jones said, voice choking as he addressed the throng. “Mike took me in, he gave me shelter and food until I got back up on my feet. After I started working again, I offered to pay him back. He said: ‘What are you talking about? You don’t owe me anything.’ ”

Outside, nearly 200 officers and civilian mourners listened to the service piped through loudspeakers.

“We all respond to calls like the one he did,” said Officer Selvy Surrena of the LAPD’s Wilshire Division. “That’s why I think it hits home.”

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.

Names of far-flung police agencies crawled past at 5 m.p.h. in the red and blue flicker of cruiser strobes: Lompoc, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Santa Ana, Lodi, El Segundo, Adelanto, Gardena and Pomona.

“I’ve ridden in too many of these, too many,” said Tom Jennings, an LAPD motorcycle officer. Riding along, he said, his mind turns to “thinking how bad his family feels thinking about the guys he works with, thinking about how I never want my family to go through it.”

Well-wishers lined Lindero Canyon Road--an elderly couple, two bicyclists, an entire family with hands on hearts.

Former Marine Bill Billetter slowly waved a faded red silk Marine Corps flag as cruisers rolled past. “Once a Marine,” he said, voice catching, “always a Marine.”

Standing with her mother, 9-year-old Morgan Rhode quietly held out a paper American flag she had made and festooned with 50 cutout paper stars. “I feel bad that the family lost somebody that they loved,” she said. “It’s sad that he risked his life for all the people in the city.”

At the grave site, ranks of uniformed policemen and policewomen from throughout California waited in clusters under the shade of the cemetery’s giant oaks for the procession to arrive.

“It’s the brotherhood of law enforcement,” said Rialto Police Officer Joseph May, who worked for the Simi Valley Police Department five years ago. “It doesn’t matter what department he works in. If an officer goes down, you come and pay your respects.”

Rialto police reserve officer Lisa Longstreet, who worked with Clark in the LAPD’s Hollywood Division when both were rookies, said: “He was always there when you needed him. He was the cut-up in briefings. He always had something to say to make people laugh.”

Two hours after the Mass had begun, police on motorcycles began to arrive at Valley Oaks Memorial Park, two by two. They were followed by four Los Angeles Police Department officers on horses. A fifth officer led a riderless horse, a pair of police-issue boots backward in its stirrups.

The waiting officers took their places in orderly rows, with Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams and Lt. Gov. Gray Davis in the front row. Two 50-foot-long lines of bright flowers marked a path to the grave site.

To the melodic whine of bagpipes, Msgr. O’Connell, dressed in long black robes, was the first to climb the incline from the road, flanked by two deacons in white. The family followed and took their seats under a canopy that shielded them from the hot midday sun.

The monsignor 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, the sound of muffled crying behind him. He led the mourners in “Our Father.” The mourners said the words of the prayer and wiped away tears.

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

Four LAPD helicopters roared toward the cemetery, the rearmost one veering off to the south directly over Clark’s grave in the “missing man” formation.

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.

The pallbearers gently placed their white gloves on top of the coffin with a rosebud atop each pair.

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

The policeman’s widow stood and 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.

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