By Jaxon Van Derbeken
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — The Oakland police captain who runs the department’s SWAT unit has asked to be reassigned because of the team’s resentment over his decision to console the families of two officers slain by a parolee rather than lead what became an ill-fated raid for the killer, sources told The Chronicle on Tuesday.
Capt. Ed Tracey made his request after a meeting with the 24-member SWAT team, during which officers said they “weren’t confident in him” because of his conduct during the March 21 incident, a law enforcement source said. Two SWAT officers died in the raid.
However, as of late Tuesday, Tracey remained in charge of the special operations division, which includes the SWAT team and the department’s traffic unit, said police spokesman Officer Jeff Thomason.
He would not confirm any request by Tracey for reassignment. However, he said, the department typically does not make personnel decisions based solely on the request of an individual officer.
The first two officers shot March 21 in the violence in East Oakland, Sgt. Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege, were motorcycle officers under Tracey’s command.
Dunakin, 40, was declared dead a short time later. Hege, 41, was mortally wounded and was declared brain dead the next day.
Tracey was with their families at Highland Hospital when police got a tip that the gunman, 26-year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon, had fled from the shooting scene at 74th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard to his sister’s apartment less than a block away.
Tracey was reached by phone by patrol Capt. Rick Orozco, who told him the SWAT team was being assembled to raid the apartment and that Tracey should return to supervise the operation, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the events. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the department.
Tracey opted to remain at the hospital, saying he was tending to the families. Orozco stressed that Tracey was needed, but he never showed up, the sources said.
Orozco, who had SWAT team experience, decided to go forward with the raid. Deputy Chief David Kozicki was on hand, but his role in the decision-making is not clear. Kozicki did not return calls seeking comment.
When the SWAT team went in, Sgts. Ervin Romans, 43, and Daniel Sakai, 35, were shot and killed. Officers returned fire and killed Mixon.
‘These were my men’
Tracey spoke at length at the officers’ funeral March 27 at the Oracle Arena.
“These were my men,” he said. “They died doing what they loved: riding in motorcycles, kicking in doors, serving in SWAT.”
SWAT team members, however, met recently with Tracey as well as a counselor to deal with their bitterness over the raid. The meeting prompted Tracey to ask acting Police Chief Howard Jordan that he no longer oversee the unit, the law enforcement sources said.
“In that meeting, SWAT officers expressed in person that they weren’t confident in him,” said one source with knowledge of the situation.
Jordan declined to comment Tuesday.
Tracey also declined to comment, saying it was a personnel matter and that “this department is still going through a lot of pain.”
How incident unfolded
Word of Tracey’s request for reassignment came as police officials gave the first of a series of briefings Tuesday to officers about the events of March 21. The department is offering the briefings all week.
Police with knowledge of Tuesday’s session gave this account of the incident:
Dunakin, who had been with the motorcycle unit for three years and was training Hege, a newcomer to the detail, pulled Mixon over for running a stop sign at MacArthur and 77th Avenue. Police have since said Mixon is suspected of having raped two women at gunpoint that morning and of having committed other sexual assaults in recent months, but Dunakin had no way of knowing that at the time.
Dunakin checked Mixon’s driver’s license and discovered that the number belonged to another person. Hege, who had been a few blocks away, arrived and with Dunakin walked toward Mixon’s car to arrest him.
Mixon, apparently seeing the officers approach, leaned out his car window and shot Dunakin in the neck. Hege turned to try to find cover and was shot in the back of the head.
Mixon then stood over the two in the street and fired again, but both those rounds were stopped by the officers’ bulletproof vests.
Killer was waiting
Two hours later, the SWAT team officers - acting on Orozco’s orders - broke down the door to the apartment where Mixon was hiding. Mixon was waiting for them.
Romans, who was leading the raid, was shot in the face just three feet inside the apartment. Mixon then retreated to a closet and resumed firing through the walls with an SKS assault rifle, killing Sakai and wounding another officer, Pat Gonzales, before being shot to death himself.
The SWAT team has not been sent on any assignments since that day. For now, the Alameda County sheriff’s SWAT detail is handling the Oakland unit’s calls.
The Police Department will bring in a panel of experts to conduct a review of the March 21 shootings and raid and then make its recommendations public, Thomason said.
“In that meeting, SWAT officers expressed in person that they weren’t confident in him.”
Copyright 2009 San Francisco Chronicle