Two family
members wore yellow t-shirts with those words, in the handwriting of Lakewood police officer Ronald Owens, and brought the yellow legal pad that he'd written them on to the night-time hearing of the Public Safety Committee.His sister, Rhonda LeFrancois, found the legal pad with the note after Owens and his three fellow officers were gunned down in a Lakewood coffee shop Nov. 29 by convicted felon Maurice Clemmons, who was given a life sentence in Arkansas but paroled by Gov. Mike Huckabee.
The chair of the Public Safety Committee, Rep. Christopher Hurst, said the point of the investigative hearing was to hear from family members, prosecutors, police officers and others, so lawmakers could hear -- first-hand -- what reforms would make a difference.
"All killings of law enforcement officers are horrific and terrible to us," said Hurst, who served as an undercover detective and commander of a homicide task force. "The reason we're focusing on the Clemmons case is because I'm starting from one single premise, that Maurice Clemmons should not have been out of custody and had an opportunity to do this." Six police officers in Washington state were gunned down in 2009.
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Photo: Family members of the four slain Lakewood police officers -- Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards -- testify in favor of reforms to close loopholes in the criminal justice system.
