01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 22, 2005

Yesterday, he was focused on his place in the funeral procession, on the flag he would carry and the thousands of cops who would walk with him.

But Wednesday night, at James Allen's wake, Tim Giunta looked around and felt a little uneasy.

"It was entirely too familiar," he said.

He has been a Fall River police officer for more than five years. He says he would have joined the force even if his father, Tom, hadn't been killed in the line of duty.

He remembers when he and his father would talk about the possibility of his becoming a second generation cop.

"My father always told me to join the state police -- they make more money."

But he was there yesterday in the big parking lot off Plainfield Street in Providence, wearing the uniform his father wore and claiming his place in a ritual as old as grief and pride.

Allen's funeral was an amazing emotional mix -- sorrow and anger and a timeless sense of tribute. It was a time for cops from Providence and Brockton, Woonsocket, Dedham, Berlin and dozens of other towns to join the long uniformed line and reaffirm the feeling that there really is no other job like theirs.

Just after 1 p.m., more than a hundred motorcycles came over a slight rise and down to the place where Bert and Ezra waited to carry James Allen's body to St. Ann Cemetery in Cranston.

Back in 1999, the two European Belgian draft horses carried the body of John H. Chafee. The next year, they carried the body of Cornel Young Jr., the Providence police officer killed in an accidental shooting by fellow officers.

Yesterday, they were hitched to the maroon and gold wagon that's usually filled with happy people enjoying hay rides or celebrating birthdays. Neil Esposito, owner of Chepachet Farms, said he built a platform to accommodate a coffin after he was called for Senator Chafee's funeral.

After Allen's coffin was taken from the hearse and lifted up to the back on the wagon by straining pallbearers, the drummers of the Rhode Island Professional Firefighters Pipes and Drums began the slow beat of the funeral march, and thousands stepped off on the two-mile procession.

And near the front, Tim Giunta stepped off with the rest of the Fall River officers, carrying the American flag and a special sense of connection with those riding in the funeral home limousines.

Officer Tom Giunta was killed in 1994 while handing out parking passes in the south end of Fall River. He was shot three times by a man later found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. His body was carried through Fall River streets by a horse-drawn wagon.

Tim Giunta was 18 then and he spent the day close to his stepmother, sister and brother. Yesterday, he said he expects his family will soon get together with the Allen family as they have gotten together with the families of the late Steven Shaw of the Providence police and other grieving police families.

"It's COPS -- Concerns of Police Survivors," Giunta explained. "It's support for the families. We'll be in touch, but we'll let them make the first move, in their own time."

As the police officers and public officials stepped off behind James Allen's body, they passed a vacant lot that had been trash-strewn early yesterday morning. But by the time the first drum sounded, the lot was clear. Tom Crowshaw had cleaned it up as his own small tribute.

"He [Allen] worked these streets for 27 years," said Crowshaw, a retired soldier who used work gloves and plastic bags to clear the trash.

"The least they can be is clean for his last day through."

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr [at] projo.com