OAKLAND — A decade has passed since four Oakland police officers were gunned down in what was marked then as the biggest single-day loss of life for law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, yet on Thursday the collective pain from that massacre was still fresh.
“I remember the day because the entire city … froze. It was as if the air were taken out of our lungs,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said outside St. Benedict’s Catholic Church minutes before the start of a memorial Mass attended by more than 100 officers, former officers, family and friends on the 10th anniversary of the officers’ deaths.
The killing of Oakland police Sgt. Mark Dunakin, Sgt. Ervin Romans, Sgt. Daniel Sakai and Officer John Hege on March 21, 2009, shook not only Oakland but also the nation, Schaaf said.
Openly weeping in front of her department during the service, Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said the four men were “the best of the best.”
To the families of those men, Kirkpatrick added, “My promise to you is that we will always honor your loved ones.”
And to the whole gathering, she said, “I don’t apologize for my tears, because they are tears of respect, they are tears of grief, of hope and strength,” while some in the congregation wiped away tears themselves.
Two of the officers, Dunakin and Hege, were slain during a routine traffic stop that fateful day by a suspected rapist they had pulled over. Later in the day, Lovelle Mixon fired a barrage of gunfire at SWAT team members Romans and Sakai when they attempted to apprehend him at his home. Mixon was also killed in the gunbattle.
The hymn “Amazing Grace” played on the keyboard as Oakland police chaplain Jayson Landeza began the ceremony. Some officers in dress uniform sang along, others bowed their heads in respect, and some appeared to dab their eyes.
Landeza read some mourners’ online posts, including one that said, “Every day since that horrific day … my heart still feels broken.”
Tamra Hege, the mother of John Hege, wore a police star emblem necklace around her neck. “His heart is still beating,” she said.
She explained that her son’s organs were donated, including his heart, liver, kidneys and skin. She and Hege’s sister, who also attended Thursday’s service, said they got to meet the man with her son’s heart, who with his family has started an annual fundraiser for organ donations in Concord. A baseball field also has been dedicated to her son in Piedmont, she said.
Sgt. Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers’ Association, said the memory hits a “raw nerve with people who lost that many friends” that one day.
“It’s much more prevalent now, but at the time for law enforcement and residents it was shocking. It was absolutely shocking,” Donelan said in an interview.
Today, the police department is younger. Some officers were in high school or younger in 2009, and of the department’s nearly 800 cops, more than half have five years or less experience on the force.
“I now have hundreds of officers who weren’t here then. I have always been so impressed with how they treat the day with grace and understand the meaning. It’s become a day that’s central to the lexicon of the Oakland Police Department,” Donelan said.
Nikki Romans, the widow of Ervin Romans, spoke briefly during the service, asking everyone to remember and honor the four men. She told this news organization on Tuesday that “this year is different.”
Each year since her husband’s death, she has sent his mother a bouquet of flowers. She had set a calendar reminder and this year it evoked more sorrow: Ervin’s mother died within the past year.
She said that on Tuesday as this anniversary approached, she went down a “dark hole” looking at pictures of her late husband, but snapped out of it when a fellow cop’s wife texted her. On Wednesday, she went to a tattoo parlor with Angela Dunakin, who lost her husband, Mark Dunakin, the same day.
The two women had not met until the funeral but now they live only a few miles apart and stay in close contact. They got matching tattoos: four birds in flight, on their shoulders, one for each fallen officer.
Angela Dunakin said that despite her grief, she’s found joy in welcoming her and her husband’s first grandchild, born in January.
“I didn’t even know how I was going to get past the first three hours, three days, three months, three years,” Nikki Romans said. “I feel blessed I can breathe and stand here on the 10th anniversary and say thank you, God, for getting me through this.”
Nikki and Ervin Romans had four children. At the time of Ervin Romans’ death, the youngest had just turned 10. Now he is 20, and planning on transferring to San Diego State University. Of the two daughters, one works for Tiffany & Co. and the other as a federal police officer based in San Francisco. The eldest son is an EMT and testing to become a Los Angeles County firefighter, after serving in the U.S. Marines.
“I’m broken, but I have to keep living and I have to show my children that,” Nikki Romans said. “I know they must feel the same. We don’t always sit around and discuss that pain, but I just want to be that person to look up to.
“It’s crazy how powerful it can take over me,” she said. “It’s unbelievable I still feel this way every day.”