Chief Weber to Keynote State, National Ceremonies for Slain Officers

Wauwatosa Police Chief Barry Weber will be the featured speaker at both the state's annual memorial ceremony for slain law officers and a national ceremony at which Officer Jennifer Lynn Sebena's inscribed name will be unveiled on a memorial wall.

The state ceremony will be at noon Friday at the corner of Mifflin and Pinkney streets at the north corner of Capitol Square in Madison. It will be preceded by a procession of visiting law enforcement officers, including a large contingent from Wauwatosa.

Jen Sebena will be honored there along with Milwaukee County Sheriff's Deputy Sergio Aleman and three Wisconsin officers killed on duty nearly 100 years ago.

Weber will speak at that ceremony and then travel to Washington, DC, for another early Monday when Sebena will be recognized among her counterparts from across the United States and its territories on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.

Wauwatosa Police Sgt. Paul Leist will escort Sebena's mother, Violet Gerhat, to Washington for the dedication.

Several other officers will travel to Washington on their own time to attend the ceremony, a department spokesman said.

Read all of Wauwatosa Patch's coverage of the Jennifer Sebena case

Sebena died from five gunshot wounds to the head, suffered Christmas Eve morning while she was on her shift and just going back on patrol after a stop at the auxiliary police office at Fire Station No. 1 in Wauwatosa Village.

Her husband, Benjamin Sebena, is being held on $1 million cash bond awaiting trial for first-degree intentional homicide in her death. A wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran of the Marine Corps, he has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Deputy Aleman died July 31 in a traffic accident when he ran into the back of a flatbed truck while responding to a call.

Jen Sebena's inclusion on the National Memorial wall became the subject of a nationwide outcry when the directing board of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund initially denied her a place among those who had died in the line of duty.

The reasoning was that Sebena was a victim of a domestic violence homicide – which of course itself a capital crime – and so not in the course of fighting crime and protecting her community.

Officers and citizens from across the country, led by the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, sprang to the defense of Sebena as deserving a place of honor, and thousands of names were collected on a petition to include her.

Several examples were produced of male officers already included on the memorial rolls who died in domestic or personal disputes, some while off duty. Many examples were produced of officers who died while off or only marginally on duty, such as in ceremonial processions, and cases of officers who died of natural causes while on routine duties.

Sebena, on the other hand, was on duty, in uniform, armed and in performance of her duty when she was criminally ambushed, her supporters argued – and eventually, the Memorial Fund board relented.