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 Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — When Oakland police Sgts. Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai burst into an apartment on 74th Avenue on Saturday, they knew they were entering a dangerous situation. After all, they were looking for a man who had already killed two police officers.
What they didn’t know was that the killer, Lovelle Mixon, had somehow gotten hold of an AK-47 assault rifle, police officials say. All they knew was that the gunman who had shot motorcycle officers Sgt. Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege about two hours earlier used a handgun.
“Nobody knew he had an AK-47,” said City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who was among four council members to join Mayor Ron Dellums and acting Police Chief Howard Jordan for a late-night press conference Saturday.
The bulletproof vests that Romans and Sakai wore were no help - when Mixon fired his automatic rifle through a closet door in the apartment, he hit the two sergeants in the head.
The killings of four officers would devastate any police department. But it was especially traumatic for an Oakland force that has been beefed up in recent years with a lot of young, inexperienced cops.
“We’ve got a really young force out there, and this is really hitting them hard,” officer Bob Valladon, former head of the Oakland Police Officers Association, said Sunday as he drove from one slain officer’s home to another to meet with their families. “We’ve hired maybe 25o new cops in the past five years, so about a quarter of the force has never seen anything like this. No one has.
“These cops (who were killed) were veterans,” Valladon said. “The best of the best.”
Sgt. Dom Arotzarena, current head of the Police Officers Association, said the killings bring to the surface something that runs through the undercurrent of any police station.
“Every day you go in. You look around,” Arotzarena said, and “you know (there’s a possibility) that someone is going to get killed. You don’t know who. You don’t know how. You don’t know when. But you know it is going to happen to someone.
“That’s just the reality of being a cop these days.”
And there’s another undercurrent to the cops’ reaction, more particular to Oakland - some officers say they’ll be looking to see whether the outrage over these killings approaches the level heard from politicians, officials and community leaders when BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station.
Copyright 2009 San Francisco Chronicle