Thousands of police officers from across the country and Bay Area residents are expected to fill Oracle Arena today for the funeral of four Oakland police officers shot and killed in the line of duty.
Officers from throughout California and from as far away as New York and Florida will attend the 11 a.m. service in the arena, which holds more than 19,000 people. A contingent of officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is also planning to be there.
People who can't get into the arena will be able to watch the service on big screens in the adjacent Oakland Coliseum.
The funeral will also be televised live on several television stations, an unprecedented action that police officials said was commensurate with the outpouring of grief over the single deadliest loss of life in Oakland Police Department history.
"It is very overwhelming and touching," police spokesman Officer Jeff Thomason said.
The funeral will be unprecedented in at least one other respect - all 815 members of the Oakland Police Department are being allowed to attend, meaning the city's streets will be patrolled most of the day by officers from 15 law-enforcement agencies in Alameda County, including the sheriff's office, the California Highway Patrol and city and regional police departments.
"Any time an event like this happens, it's up to the other agencies to step up and do the right thing," sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson said Thursday. "Tomorrow, we'll be helping the city of Oakland and Saturday, the city of Oakland might be helping us."
Officers and several hundred other police employees will be bused to the arena from Oakland police headquarters and the Eastmont substation in East Oakland. The substation is just a block from where Sgts. Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai and Officer John Hege were shot and killed Saturday by 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon, a wanted parolee.
Dunakin, 40, and Hege, 41, were killed after they pulled Mixon over for a traffic stop at 74th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard. Their motorcycles were on display this week in the Eastmont substation, surrounded by flowers.
Romans, 43, and Sakai, 35, died when their SWAT team stormed the apartment where Mixon was hiding. Mixon, armed with an assault rifle, was also shot to death.
Dispatchers from police agencies across the state reported for duty Thursday at the Oakland dispatch center at a building on Edgewater Drive, located across Interstate 880 from the arena. They will help answer calls today.
"There will be no decrease in police service during the funeral," Thomason said.
Speakers at the service will include acting Police Chief Howard Jordan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and state Attorney General Jerry Brown. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will attend and meet privately with the officers' families, but will not address those attending the funeral.
Attendees are being urged to arrive early and to take public transportation. BART, Amtrak's Capitol Corridor train line and AC Transit have stops or stations adjacent to the Coliseum complex.
The gates to the parking lot will open at 7 a.m., and the doors of the arena will open at 9 a.m. Video cameras will not be allowed inside the arena.
Long processions to and from the arena will result in the closure of many East Bay freeways in the hours before and after the funeral. "It will affect every major freeway," Thomason said.
Processions from mortuaries in Tracy, Danville, Oakland and Hayward will make their way to the arena on Interstates 580, 680, 880 and 980 and Highway 238. Families of the slain officers will begin arriving about 10:15 a.m.
The funeral will be followed by a number of rituals, including the playing of bagpipes, a 21-gun salute with a military cannon, and flyovers involving 20 law-enforcement helicopters from across the nation.
Police Capt. Paul Figueroa has been overseeing planning for the funeral. The families of the slain officers embraced during an emotional meeting Tuesday night, Figueroa said.
Asked to describe the challenges in putting together such a service, Figueroa said, "What I'm doing is nothing compared to ..." His voice trailed off, and he abruptly left a media briefing.
In the first-floor lobby of the police headquarters on Seventh Street, a worker was busy sandblasting four new names Thursday onto a memorial wall, joining those of 47 other Oakland officers killed in the line of duty.
Original Source : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/26/MNJ116NGD7.DTL
