2,800 Mourners Honor Slain Oxnard Officer

Law enforcement officers from throughout the state were among about 2,800 mourners Monday to honor a slain comrade and support the despondent sergeant who fatally wounded his close friend and protege in a disastrous Oxnard SWAT raid last week.

Family, friends and fellow officers remembered Oxnard Police Officer James Rex Jensen Jr. as one of the best among them. They also embraced Sgt. Daniel Christian, who accidentally shot the 30-year-old patrolman after mistaking him for a drug dealer in a smoky condominium hallway.

Christian escorted Jensen’s widow, Jennifer, and her two young daughters as they mourned a man whose last words were a request that his colleagues take care of his family. Tearful and bowed, the sergeant supported the widow as she walked to services, and they clutched one other’s hands during them.

“That’s the way Jim would have wanted it, and that’s the way Jenny wanted it,” said Elizabeth Lopez, Jennifer Jensen’s sister. “There is absolutely nothing to forgive. There is no animosity. There is only love.”

That affection overflowed during an emotional morning funeral and a crisp afternoon farewell at graveside, where a top Oxnard SWAT officer presented a folded American flag from Jensen’s casket to his widow after slipping Christian’s sergeant stripes into it.

Following the cemetery service, a dozen Special Weapons and Tactics officers encircled Christian near the grave, hugging one another and breaking into sobs.

Jensen was killed by shotgun blasts last Wednesday during a dawn raid on a south Oxnard condo, where police expected to find three drug dealers but which was empty. Seconds after Jensen hurled a smoky “flash-bang” diversionary grenade into a second-story hallway, Christian mistook him for a suspect in the dense smoke.

On Monday morning, mourners overflowed the large Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Loma Vista Road, where Jensen was a member. Perhaps 1,000 police officers from dozens of agencies as far away as the Bay Area--their badges draped in black ribbons--also attended the funeral.

“It’s a matter of respect,” said Deputy Dan Bessette, who drove six hours from Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, to be there.

Dressed in his SWAT uniform, as were many officers, Kevin Blagg of the Baldwin Park Police Department said: “There is no one to get mad at. There is no one to blame . . . They basically lose two officers out of the whole deal.”

That sense of a double loss--one officer to gunshots, the other to despair--was echoed throughout a series of tributes to Jensen, the third Ventura County officer killed in the line of duty in 26 months. Oxnard patrolman James O’Brien was killed in December 1993 and Simi Valley Officer Michael Clark was slain last August, both by criminal suspects.

Jensen, a talented and tireless officer promoted to the SWAT team in July, was remembered as a man who gave selflessly to his family, his job and the Oxnard community as an unpaid volunteer and Little League coach.

“Today we honor a young man [who] was a tremendous person,” said police Chaplain Earl Jardine. “People who watched him often said, ‘I want to be like that.’ . . . He was a star.”

Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt told mourners, including all 179 uniformed members of his department, that Jensen was “a peace officer in the true meaning of the word. . . . Where he went he brought peace. . . . The people of Oxnard trusted Jim Jensen.”

The chief repeated the words of an Oxnard mother whose son had been harassed by gang members. After Jensen and another patrolman counseled the boy, he told his mother, “ ‘Mom, those two guys are two of the best cops I ever saw,’ ” Hurtt said.

Hurtt alluded to the circumstances of Jensen’s shooting only once. “No one knows why Jim died. What happened can only remind us that we are human and we make mistakes,” the chief said.

Oxnard SWAT team leader Bill Lewis said Jensen was an officer of unlimited energy, enthusiasm and confidence, a perfect choice for the Special Weapons and Tactics squad. Before his last assignment Wednesday, Jensen was his usual self. “He had his game face on, but I saw that little smirk [of confidence] on his face.”

The more Jensen learned about his assignment as the first officer into the condo and up the stairs to the second floor, the more excited he became, Lewis said.

Even after he was shot, he looked “frightened but strong,” Lewis said. And with his final breaths, in his final words, “he said he wanted us to take care of his family.”

Officer Robert Flinn, a second member of the SWAT team, spoke for his unit, saying of the shooting: “We as a team are not casting blame, and we are not making excuses. We are, however, sharing the responsibility of what happened.” When it is clear what caused the tragedy, “we will share that information so as to not let this happen to any other agency.”

A close friend and neighbor, Flinn said that, in case of death, he and Jensen had promised to tell the other’s children what kind of person the missing father was.

“I will tell Katie and Lindsey what kind of man their father was,” Flinn said. “And if I’m not able to do it, I’m sure Danny Christian will be . . . “

After the 90-minute funeral service, dozens of police motorcycles and squad cars with flashing lights led hundreds of vehicles in a 3 1/2-mile-long procession along Ventura streets. Bunches of solemn residents dotted the route, waving American flags and explaining the event to their children.

Johanna Dominguez, 14, cried as she watched.

“We didn’t even know this cop,” said the Anacapa Middle School student. “He was just trying to help the world and make it a better place. This really shows that he was really respected by his family and friends.”

Oak View resident Dru Weagraff, 43, and her 8-year-old son, Jason, held small American flags in recognition of the fallen officer and watched silently as his hearse passed.

“I knew Jim Jensen when he worked up at the honor farm,” said Weagraff, a parolee who had talked with the officer about her troubles with drugs. “He was a real caring guy.”

“I’ve had a lot of problems with the police, but I just wanted to show my respects,” she said. “He really showed a human side of a cop to me for the first time . . . We need more people like him on the force.”

Mourners began to gather at Ivy Lawn Cemetery two hours before the procession arrived. There, the motorcycles and police cruisers were joined by a mounted detail and trailed by an officer leading a riderless horse, representing the fallen comrade.

Jennifer Jensen, clutching the hand of Christian so tightly that her knuckles were white, kept her composure as she sat before her husband’s coffin. But following a 21-rifle salute and a mournful “Taps” from two bugles, she and family members wept. She turned her head into Christian’s shoulder, in whose lap 6-year-old Lindsey sat throughout the ceremony.

As the service neared conclusion, police Chaplain Larry C. Modugno handed the widow and her older daughter small metal crosses. Behind them, 3-year-old Katelyn slept, cradled in the arms of her aunt, Heidi Romero of Ventura. Romero gently laid the cross on the girl’s chest and drew her closer.

“The crosses symbolize God’s love for them, and their daddy’s love for the girls,” the chaplain said later.

After the ceremony, as family members climbed into a line of black limousines, Romero said that Jensen had been a wonderful father.

“Lindsey,” she said to the girl, who still clutched her cross, “wasn’t your daddy the best daddy in the whole world?”

Although overwhelmed by the events of the day, the little girl still nodded, yes.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson and correspondents Eric Wahlgren and Andrew D. Blechman contributed to this story.

* FINAL SALUTE: Police SWAT team mourns the loss as a family. B1