They were the best of us, says chief at memorial service for 3 fallen York County officers

RED LION — The service began shortly after noon Thursday when Pastor Aaron Anderson took the pulpit at Living Word Community Church, trying to find the right words to say in the moment.

They came hard. Anderson, the church’s lead pastor, was officiating the funeral for three police officers – Northern York County Regional detectives Cody Becker, Mark Baker and Cody Emenheiser – who were killed in an ambush just over a week ago while executing an arrest warrant in North Codorus Township.

He spoke about the grief and anger that followed the deaths of the three detectives at the hands of a young man armed with an AR-15. He spoke of trying to make sense of the act of madness that led the mourners to this day. He asked mourners to seek solace in the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose grief was an expression of love, his directed at the cruelty of hard hearts.

He spoke of his relationships with law enforcement officers, describing them as “a tough, hardened bunch.”

York County residents lining the route for the funeral procession in Red Lion, holding up police flags in tribute to three fallen officers. pic.twitter.com/ja49Dig1Ce

— WGAL (@WGAL) September 25, 2025

Yet, as the service continued and the portraits of the three officers emerged, it was clear that the three men, three veteran detectives, were far from hardened.

The procession

The procession wound from the funeral home down Cape Horn Road to Living Word under a gray sky. People lined the route, standing in the rain, waving flags. At the church, the detectives’ flag-draped caskets were carried to the front of the sanctuary. Soft music played as the 1,500-seat auditorium filled with family, friends and law enforcement from all over the state and region. Gov. Josh Shapiro attended.

Nancy Duarte Matarese, mother of West York Police Officer Andrew Duarte who was killed in a shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in February, also attended, as one of the few people who could imagine what the detectives’ families are going through, as someone who understood.

‘The best of us’

Northern York County Regional Police Chief Dave Lash took to the podium, sighed, and said, “All right. We’re going to get through this together.”

He quoted the Edgar Allen Guest poem, “My Creed.”

“To live as gently as I can; “To be, no matter where, a man; “To take what comes of good or ill “And cling to faith and honor still; “To do my best, and let that stand.”

Becker, Baker and Emenheiser, he said, “were gentle. They were kind.” And although in the course of their work they witnessed “some of the most evil human behavior imaginable,” they maintained their “faith, honor and uncompromising honor.”

And they always maintained their humanity. Becker, one of his fellow officers said, always treated the people he arrested with compassion. Baker, Lash and others said, was a practical joker and seemingly always had a smile on his face. Emenheiser was the embodiment of protecting and serving, Lash said, a devout and decent man who only seemed to become agitated when he was cheering for, or booing, his beloved Philadelphia Eagles.

“They were the best of us,” Lash said.

‘I’ll be the one telling the stories’

Corporal Andy Miller started at the department as an intern in 2011.

As an intern, he recalled, he was barely tolerated by the full-time officers on the overnight crew. Except Emenheiser, who always volunteered to have Miller ride with him for his shift, even if it meant “just holding his diet green tea and his clipboard,” Miller recalled.

That year he interned, Emenheiser topped the department’s officers in making DUI arrests. Miller recalled Emenheiser would take the time to talk to the person in the back seat of the police cruiser, “explaining the entire process in a compassionate manner.”

When he was on the job, Miller said, he often relied on Baker for advice on conducting investigations or composing search warrants or other policing matters. “He was always busy,” Miller said. “But when you asked him if he was busy, he’d always say, ‘No. What do you need?’”

Miller worked the streets with Becker, who always seemed one step ahead of him. He recalled they had responded to a report of a burglary in process at the Morningstar Market and caught the suspect in the act. Miller chased the suspect on foot across the parking lot, through piles of snow. When he arrived at the other end of the parking lot, he recalled, there was Becker standing by his car, the suspect in cuffs.

Whenever he patrolled in Spring Grove and someone would ask him whether he knew Cody Becker, he would brace himself to hear a 20-minute story about the former wrestling star at the local high school. Everybody in town seemed to know him, Miller said. It reached the point, he said, that when someone would asked him whether he knew Becker, he’d reply, “Never heard of him.”

“In the future,” Miller said, “if someone asks me if I know Cody Becker, it’s gonna to be reverse. I’m gonna sit there and tell them about how great he was. Not only Cody, but Mark and Isaiah. All three of these individuals serve the community with excellence, pride, and honor.”

The joker, the good guy and the wrestler

Corporal Steve Lebo recalled Baker’s pranks. He once froze Lebo’s patrol hat. Another time, he licked his computer screen, and yet another time, he managed to have the after-hours calls to the department routed to Lebo’s phone.

Baker, a nationally and internationally recognized expert in digital forensics, would also sneak into his colleagues’ computers and change the assignment of the keys on the keyboard – making the “r” key the space key and so on, resulting in his fellow officers cursing Baker’s name loudly in the office.

He was a joker, but he was also kind and compassionate, his daughter Rebecca said. She recalled that he was once assigned to an FBI task force investigating human trafficking. While other officers called the women prostitutes, she said, Baker called them victims.

Lebo remembered when Emenheiser joined the criminal investigation division and conducted his first interview with “a bad guy, a real bad guy.”

The interview began at 9 a.m. or so. After an hour, Emenheiser told Lebo, “I think I’m wearing him down.” An hour and a half later, he was still at it. Emenheiser worked through lunch, which was alarming to Lebo. Nothing came between Emenheiser and lunch, he recalled.

Finally, after more than three hours, Lebo and another detective decided that they’d give him 10 more minutes before pulling him out.

Five or ten minutes later, Lebo said, Emenheiser had secured a confession.

Lebo also recalled the first time he met Becker. He was on patrol, parked by the side of Lincoln Highway, his lights flashing, as he pulled a road-kill deer off the highway. This kid pulled up in his light blue Chevy Blazer and started talking to him. The kid said he was going to be a cop and that he always wanted to work with Northern Regional. And then he asked Lebo, “Can I have that deer?”

Lebo said, “I asked myself, ‘Who was that kid?’”

A year later, that kid, Becker, was working alongside Lebo. Lebo watched as Becker studied for promotions – something he didn’t take as seriously – and watched as Becker became a corporal and then a sergeant.

They shared a love of wrestling – they both coached the sport – and when Becker would explain a certain wrestling move, “words wouldn’t do,” Lebo said. He’d demonstrate the move on Lebo, taking him to the floor of the locker room. Sometimes, he said, Lash would walk in on them and “I could only imagine his reaction to what he was witnessing.”

Lebo always thought he and Becker would retire from Northern Regional at the same time. Now, though, the department has been left with “two sets of shoes and one pair of cowboy boots that will be hard to fill.”

Retired Northern Regional Chief Mark Bentzel also bonded with Becker over wrestling. Becker was good. He had 118 wins at Spring Grove, qualified for states and went on to wrestle at Millersville University, where he twice qualified for the NCAA championship tournament.

Bentzel also recalled that Becker was a good football player, called “the human missile” on punt returns. He once intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. The quarterback he picked off was Chad Henne, who went on to play at the University of Michigan and in the NFL.

Bentzel knew Becker and his family, and in 2008 asked him if he ever considered a career in law enforcement. The chief recognized Becker’s “character and toughness,” attributes that would serve him well as a police officer. And, Bentzel said, “He was the most genuine person I knew.”

A year later, he said, Becker graduated from the police academy. He had already been hired by Nothern Regional and wore the department’s uniform at his graduation.

‘End of watch’

The hour-and-a-half-long service ended with Anderson reading the 23rd Psalm. The line “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me” resonated.

The families of the fallen filed out of the sanctuary.

Outside, an honor guard fired a rifle salute and bagpipers played “Amazing Grace.” A bugler played “Taps.” Police officers folded the flags that had been draped over the caskets and presented them to the families of Becker, Baker and Emenheiser.

A York County 911 dispatcher announced their “end of watch.”