2,000 Mourners Bid Farewell to Slain Simi Valley Officer

Police officers from across California swelled a crowd of mourners to more than 2,000 Wednesday to bid farewell to slain Simi Valley police Officer Michael Clark, who was shot last week as he tried to calm a distraught man.

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

A rumbling cortege of hundreds of police cruisers and motorcycles from as far away as Lodi, Calif., bore him to his grave.

“For us all to come like this is a way of offering brotherly love among police officers,” Simi Valley police Sgt. John Wilcox said. “Every person here knows it could happen to them.”

LAPD Officer Rebecca Smalling, who graduated from the Police Academy with Clark and worked with him in the Devonshire Division, said: “I’ve lost a good friend. I’m just so sad.”

During the funeral service at St. Jude’s, childhood friends and the Simi Valley officers who saw the shooting of Clark eulogized the 28-year-old officer, whose death 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 church.

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 the 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 Daniel Allan Tuffree, 48, a reportedly suicidal social studies teacher.

As Clark and partners Michael Pearce and Sgt. Tony Anzilotti tried to calm him, Tuffree opened fire, hitting Clark in the arm and back. Clark returned fire as he went down, police said.

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 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.”

To the plaintive skirl of bagpipes, pallbearers ushered Clark’s casket to the hearse, with his widow following in tears. The hearse was escorted to Valley Oaks Memorial Park by 258 police cars and 160 motorcycle officers.

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, Pomona.

“I’ve ridden in too many of these, too many,” said LAPD motorcycle Officer Tom Jennings.

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.

After the burial ceremony was completed, Jenifer Clark again broke down and cried.

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, the victim’s father, cried, pounding softly on the casket with his right hand as he held his face with his left hand.

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 to his grave.

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