Editor’s Note: Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and fellow officers of Oakland (CA) PD Sgt. Daniel Sakai, Sgt. Ervin Romans, Ofcr. John Hege and Sgt. Mark Dunakin, who were shot and killed over the weekend. During our recent conversations with the agency about this incident, we have made them aware of your many comments and we have assured them that officers as far away as Afghanistan are standing with them in support during this difficult time. Anyone who would like to make a contribution to trust funds set up for the families may do so by two methods — wire transfer or by check. Wire transfers may be made directly to the following Merrill Lynch accounts: The Dunakin Children’s Family Trust, Acct. No. 204-04065; The Romans Children’s Family Trust, Acct. No. 204-04066; and The Sakai Family Trust, Acct. No. 204-04064. No fund had been set up as of Monday afternoon on behalf of Hege, who had no children. Individual checks can also be made out to the families and mailed to the Oakland Police Officer’s Association, Attn: Rennee Hassna, 555 5th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607. Make checks payable to the Dunakin Children’s Family Trust; the Romans Children’s Family Trust; Sakai Family Trust.
By Matthew B. Stannard, John Cote
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — Killings of several police officers as happened in Oakland over the weekend are rare and significantly affect police training to prevent similar attacks from happening again.
Police and law enforcement experts will dissect the case to find out what went wrong Saturday, likely breaking the incident in two: the traffic stop that left two motorcycle officers fatally wounded, and the SWAT operation two hours later that left two officers and the suspect dead.
“In every case, there’s something to be learned,” said Roy Bedard, a Florida-based instructor in police use of force and tactics. “We will be looking at (this) incident, believe me, not only in Oakland but across California and across the nation.”
A review would look at whether the officers knew they were approaching an armed and wanted parolee - or whether they thought they were conducting a routine traffic stop, Bedard said.
Despite a police cliche that there is “no such thing” as a routine traffic stop, Bedard said, the reality is that years of routine can cause even a well-trained officer to expect nothing out of the ordinary.
Even with two officers on the scene, Bedard said, an assailant can open fire on both before the officers have time to react - especially if they are not in the defensive position for a high-risk stop, with one officer covering the other from a safe position.
“Law enforcement officers are almost conditioned to put their guard down so they don’t appear to be Gestapo-like in their tactics and demeanor,” Bedard said. “If there are no factors to indicate this is somebody that needs special treatment, a high risk stop, we generally would have our guard down.”
What did they know?
Investigators have not said whether Oakland motorcycle officers John Hege and Mark Dunakin, who stopped a Buick driven by Lovelle Mixon on Saturday, knew they were approaching a wanted man. Mixon fatally shot both officers, neither of whom fired a shot, police said.
Mixon fled, and two hours later, he fatally shot SWAT officers Daniel Sakai and Ervin Romans when they entered an apartment where he was hiding, police said.
The SWAT operation will be investigated for its own set of lessons - and Oakland police on Saturday faced a situation that is among the most dangerous that tactical police face, said John O’Connor, executive director of the U.S. National SWAT Championships, a training and competition organization in Arizona.
The Oakland SWAT team faced a violent opponent in an enclosed space behind a closed door - a space with only one way in or out, which training officers call the “fatal funnel.”
“When you come through that door, it’s a focal point,” he said. “If somebody is waiting in ambush, which is the ultimate risk for an entry, they shoot to the point where they know you have to come in.”
Why go in?
The analysis will probably focus first on one critical question, the experts said: why the SWAT team decided to enter the apartment rather than seal the building and wait outside.
Oakland police have not yet answered that question. There are several possible answers: One, said O’Connor, is that they concluded the suspect posed a danger too great to wait.
“Here you have a gunman running around the community who just shot and ... killed two other officers,” he said. “They’ve got to chase him, they can’t wait and make a plan - they’ve got to corner him. They’ve got to get him. They’ve got to find him - now.”
Other possibilities are that the team was concerned about possible innocents in the apartment with the suspect, Bedard said, or the possibility that the team was not sure the suspect was in the apartment and needed to clear it quickly to move on to other possible locations.
“You can’t sit on an apartment for two days if you’re not sure the guy is in there,” he said.
Another question that investigators will probably ask is whether the SWAT team was aware that the suspect was armed with an assault weapon inside the apartment. Police said he used a handgun to shoot the officers during the traffic stop. Knowing what kind of weapon they faced might have affected the team’s tactics, the experts said, or their decision about how and when to enter the apartment.
But once that decision was made, even a well-equipped SWAT team faces a huge risk against a suspect wielding an assault weapon - heavy ballistic shields can protect against the high-velocity rounds, but may be too bulky to fit in an apartment doorway. And even the heaviest military-grade armor with ballistic plates can’t cover every inch of an officer’s body, O’Connor said.
“Even then, if he doesn’t hit you in the plate, (if he) hits you anywhere else, that bullet is going to go right through you. It’s going to go right through your vest,” he said. “These are military weapons. They’re not police weapons.”
Other killings
This weekend’s attack was the deadliest on California police officers in a single incident since 1970, when four California Highway Patrol officers were shot and killed by two men in the Santa Clarita Valley.
There is only one other California case in which more American officers were killed in a violent incident: In 1898, five Alameda County sheriff’s office deputies died when a murder suspect barricaded in a powder magazine blew himself up rather than be arrested, said Chris Cosgriff, who founded the online Officer Down Memorial Page.
High-profile shootings of officers have prompted changes in police procedures since at least 1963, when two robbers disarmed and kidnapped two Los Angeles police officers during a traffic stop in what became know as the Onion Field case. One of the officers was shot and killed in an onion field near Bakersfield, while the other escaped.
The upshot was a “radical shakeup in policy and training” that directed officers to do everything in their power to retain their weapons, said Greg Meyer, a retired Los Angeles police captain and now a police historian and tactics consultant.
Perhaps the most profound procedural changes came about after the infamous Newhall incident in 1970, when four CHP officers were killed in a shootout with two men stopped for brandishing a weapon at another driver.
“We maybe mistakenly believed that we were the best there was when it came to patrolling the highways and making felony stops ... and that night we found out we probably weren’t the best we could be,” said Madera County Sheriff John Anderson, formerly a high-ranking CHP officer, who wrote a book about the incident. “They did exactly what we trained them. What we found out was our training wasn’t that good.”
Survival training
The deadly toll led to the development of speed loader devices for six-shooters and a nationwide movement in officer survival training, including taking cover and reloading.
Lessons have also been taken from violent crimes where no officers were killed, as in North Hollywood in February 1997 when two bank robbers wearing body armor and armed with assault rifles kept shotgun and handgun-wielding officers at bay during a shootout.
It ended with both robbers dead and 11 Los Angeles police officers and seven civilians injured. Police had fired hundreds of rounds.
“Departments started equipping their officers ... with urban police rifles,” Meyer said. “Those aren’t used too much, but they’re good to have when you need them.”
Whether the Oakland shootings will prompt similar policy changes is unclear.
“It’s going to take months and months to figure out the details of this thing,” Meyer said. “Maybe they will find something that’s a big aha moment like we had in the Onion Field or the Newhall shootout ... or maybe we won’t. It’s just too early.”
Copyright 2009 San Francisco Chronicle