Bike ride held for slain officer

Several hundred bicyclists staged a 50-mile ride Saturday from the Los Angeles Police Academy in Elysian Park to the San Fernando Valley and back to pay tribute to slain SWAT Officer Randal Simmons. Los Angeles police and sheriff’s deputies and officers from Culver City, Ventura County and Pasadena took part, as did riders from a number of cycling groups including AIDS/Life Cycle and the Midnight Ridazz, which advertised the event on their websites.

A brief ceremony was held at the LAPD’s West Valley Station in Reseda while flags flew at half staff in honor of Simmons, who was shot and killed Feb. 7 during a standoff with a San Fernando Valley gunman who had killed three members of his family. Simmons was the first member of the department’s elite Special Weapons and Tactics unit to be killed in the line of duty in the unit’s 40-year history.

Simmons was buried Friday after a funeral attended by 10,000 mourners. On Saturday in Reseda, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell described the ride as “the next step in the healing process.”

Sgt. Brian Morrison, head of the LAPD’s cycling team, one of the ride’s organizers, said the bicycle community played a large role in Saturday’s memorial ride.

Among those who made a special effort to take part was Anaheim resident Jerome Daniels, a dispatcher for a fuel company, who said he took a Metrolink train to Union Station, hopped on his bicycle and caught up with other riders in the Valley. Daniels said he wanted to honor Simmons “because he was so involved in the community he worked in. . . . He was a good man.”