I’ve written a lot previously about the LA County Sheriff’s Department (motto: “dumber than a bag of hair“). But not in a while: I haven’t been following the LAT as much, as it is basically unreadable unless you pay for it.
This came across Hacker News, however, and is a Justice Department press release, so I can cover it here.
I love “conspiracy to deprive rights under color of law” and “deprivation of rights under color of law”. Those are two of my favorite charges in the Federal system.
Six other people have been convicted and sentenced, including the ever-popular “disgruntled warehouse employee” who is serving 14 years. Former deputy Antrim testified at his trial, which is one reason why he only got seven years.
The big question in my mind: when is the movie coming out, and who’s going to play former deputy Antrim?
Would you like to fly in my beautiful balloon? Or if not that, a passenger airplane from the 1950s?
From those wonderful folks at TWA, “Flight To California”.
Bonus, plus CanCon! “The Mother of Rivers”, about the Columbia River ice field. Made about 1947 for the Canadian National Railways by our old friends at the National Film Board of Canada.
Bonus #2: Again, I’m stretching the definition of travel, but this involves planes and is short. Have you ever wanted to see a Boeing 747-8 fully loaded abort a takeoff at 200 MPH? Using only the brakes, no reverse thrust? And by the way, the brakes are worn down to the metal studs?
I’d like to think there would be some issues fencing bulldogs stolen at gunpoint. For example, I think most people who would pay money for a French bulldog probably want one with papers, which I’m sure the dog walker was not carrying around with him…
The article is by Peter Houlahan, who also wrote Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History (previously mentioned in this space).
Summary: why was LA the bank robbery capital of the world? Answer: banks, cars, freeways, and cocaine.
Why did LA stop being the bank robbery capital of the world? Answer: the banks tightened up security (they couldn’t care less about the money that was being taken at gunpoint, but when staff started quitting and filing worker’s comp claims for PTSD, and when customers started suing, that got their attention), and the virtual abolition of parole in the Federal system.
Today, I wanted to put up something that pushes a few of RoadRich’s hot buttons (and my own).
The California Highway Patrol has a YouTube channel. I thought it might be interesting to look at some aspects of operations that are common to both the Austin Police Department and the CHP. These are things that APD devotes presentations to in their Citizen’s Police Academy (which is on-hold at the moment), so why not take a look at how a department outside of the United States handles these things?
First up: “Air Operations”. This is a two-parter: Part 1.
(Can I note here that I hate “vlog”? I would say I hate the word, but it isn’t even a word.)
Part 2: this covers CHP’s fixed-wing (that is, not helicopter) operations.
I thought I’d do something different today. Instead of planes for our first video, trains. And instead of visiting a relatively civilized country, a fifth world banana republic.
“The California Zephyr”! With VistaDome! And courteous waiters!
To be fair, this is from the 1950s, prior to the decline and fall. And somewhat interestingly, Amtrak still runs a train called “California Zephyr” over a similar route (According to Wikipedia, the original Western Pacific Railroad, Burlington Railroad and Rio Grande Railroad incarnation shown here was discontinued in 1970, and Amtrak began running their version in 1983.)
Bonus video #1: More trains, this time the Santa Fe railroad. “Southern California Holiday”. Both of these videos also include some footage of the happiest place on Earth.
“You may cross here from country to country, with no passport problems.” I remember those days. (Never been to Tijuana, but when I was young, my family walked across the border between Texas and Mexico more than once. And when I was older, I made a couple more cross-border trips with friends. Then Homeland Security.)
Bonus video #2: Okay, travel by air this time. “California: World In a Week”, from the 1960s and United Airlines.
It is almost like being there. Except you don’t have to step over the needles and feces. Marineland of the Pacific operated until 1987, when it was bought by the people who owned SeaWorld. The new owners promptly moved all of the animals to SeaWorld San Diego, shut down Marineland, and poured concrete into the drains.
Police videos have been kind of skimpy recently because they haven’t been popping up in my YouTube recommendations. If I narrow the topics down to just “law enforcement”, I get…nothing but “Live PD” clips. Now, I have nothing against “Live PD”: I don’t watch it, because we don’t have cable, but I’ll certainly sit through a YouTube clip. In a private window in my browser, not signed in to YouTube, so why are these clips showing up in my recs? And if people want to watch “Live PD” clips, you all know where to find them, right?
One thing I learned from that book: in addition to the CHP Newhall training film, the LA County Sheriff’s Department made their own training film. I think you are better served watching the CHP film first, as the quality of the transfer on this one isn’t that great, and I have questions about the accuracy of LACSD’s film. In the interest of the historical record, however, here it is:
Totally unrelated: ever wonder about astronaut weightlessness training in the days before the “Vomit Comet”? Yeah, I do, too. Wikipedia says that the Mercury astronauts trained in a C-131. But this purports to be vintage film of Glenn, Grissom, and Shepherd training in an F-100F (not all three at the same time, obviously):
And speaking of the F-100: “TAC On Target”, from 1962, which features various aircraft in action (including the F-100, F-104, F-105, and F-4C).
I’ll just note: for those of you who work for, or deal with, a certain large company in the computer networking area (hi, Borepatch!) “TAC On Target” may have an entirely different connotation for you.
Forty years ago today, at about 3:40 in the afternoon Pacific time, five losers tried to hold up the Security Pacific Bank branch in Norco, California.
The five guys involved in the robbery were pretty much a loose collection of friends and relatives. There were two sets of brothers involved. The ostensible leader of the group had converted to a form of fundamentalist Christianity in the 70s, and had also become obsessed with a lot of the global catastrophe thinking going on at the time (Jupiter Effect, earthquakes, etc.) The main purpose of the robbery was to get funds so they could build and stock a compound. When the s–t hit the fan, they planned to retreat there with their families and ride out the apocalypse.
It didn’t go as planned. The robbers had planned to set off a large explosion as a diversion, but that failed, and the robbery was pretty much blown right away. Riverside County Sheriff’s Department responded, with the first officer on scene within seconds. The five robbers had managed to accumulate what even I would call a truly impressive stash of guns, ammo, and improvised explosive devices, and a firefight broke out between the RCSD and the five robbers. The responding deputies were outgunned, but continued to engage.
The robbers tried to flee in their (stolen) getaway van, but a lucky shot from one of the RCSD officers killed their getaway driver and the van crashed. The remaining four robbers hijacked a work truck from a passing driver (still shooting it out with RCSD) and fled.
The robbery team then proceeded to lead law enforcement (RCSD, the California Highway Patrol, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department) on a merry chase of approximately 25 miles (possibly 35 miles: sources differ) through the Inland Empire, into the San Gabriel Mountains, and up a dirt road. They were firing at the officers and throwing IEDs the whole way: according to Wikipedia, 33 police cars and a helicopter were damaged by gunfire.
Once they got into the mountains, the robbery team repeatedly pulled ahead on the dirt road, then stopped in an attempt to ambush the responding officers. At the time, the radio systems they used did not inter-operate: officers from one department, who could communicate with their department’s helicopter, were relaying messages on the one available “mutual aid” frequency to the other departments warning of ambushes.
The robbery team was finally stopped by a washed out area of the dirt road, exited the truck and ambushed the officers chasing them. Deputy James Evans of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was shot and killed. Two deputies behind Evans (D. J. McCarty and James McPheron of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department) brought into play the SBCSD’s only rifle: a stolen M-16 that had been dumped from a moving car, recovered by the department, and kept when the military said “We don’t want it back”. Supposedly, it didn’t look like much, but it fired.
(At one point, responding law enforcement officers pulled over and commandeered a lever-action rifle from a target shooter who was walking along the road. This particular area was in common use as an informal range, and the robbery team had practiced shooting there. Unfortunately, the lever-action rifle the deputies commandeered was a .22.)
When SBCSD started firing back on full-auto, the robbery team decided it was time to make like the trees and get out of there. They fled into the forest. Three of them surrendered or were captured the following day. The fourth one was tracked down by a law enforcement team, was shot multiple times when he refused to surrender, and apparently killed himself with a shot to the chest from his .38.
There was, of course, a trial. From the account I’ve read, it may have been the closest thing to a courtroom circus California ever saw before OJ. The trial lasted 14 months: at the end of it, the three surviving bank robbers were sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. All three remain in the California penal system today.
The definitive, and (to the best of my knowledge, only) account of this story is Peter Houlahan’s Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History. I’m embarrassed to admit: I’d never heard of the Norco robbery until I saw a reference to Houlahan’s book somewhere. I was in high school at the time, and I thought I was fairly aware of current events and the world around me. So finding out there was a major bank robbery and shootout in California that wasn’t North Hollywood and that I’d never heard of kind of blew my mind.
I have mixed feelings about the book, though. The early chapters about the background of the robbery team and especially the leader kind of bugged me. Houlahan seemed to be kind of condescending about the more mainstream aspects of the leader’s Christian beliefs. And he didn’t answer the one question I have: where did these five losers, who were either under-employed on unemployed, get the money to accumulate all those guns and ammo? (He doesn’t say anything about them stealing weapons: all of their purchases were apparently legit over the counter sales at gun shops. Stealing guns: bad. Bank robbery: A-OK?)
Once he settles down and actually gets into the robbery, though, Houlahan’s book became much more interesting to me. I think he did an excellent job of profiling many of the law enforcement people involved, especially several members of the RCSD and their struggles (both before and after the robbery). Andy Delgado’s story is especially compelling to me. I think he was also pretty strong on the lack of preparation by RCSD and the other agencies involved for an event like this. The departments were still armed with mostly revolvers and shotguns, and almost no rifles (officially). They also did a sorry job of managing PTSD for the responding officers. Several of them (including Glyn Bolasky) left law enforcement afterwards. (Deputy Bolasky recovered from his injuries, and, after leaving law enforcement, joined the Air Force and became a Lieutenant Colonel.)
Houlahan’s also pretty good about the trial, which I haven’t gone into a lot of detail about. I’ll refer you to his book if you want that part of the story. And, to his credit, he tried really hard to be precise about firearms and firearms terminology. There are a couple of places where he slipped up (repeated references to the robbers having a “.357 rifle” in their intended getaway car: I’m pretty sure he meant “.375 H&H”).
Someone has posted a documentary/training film, apparently made by the Irvine Police Department in 1982, on YouTube. (Officer Rolf Parkes, who is credited in the first video, was with RCSD at the time and was injured in the shootout.) It is longish (close to an hour) but broken up into three chunks for your viewing pleasure, and well worth watching. (The transfer quality is also better than some of those vintage Motorola videos.)
I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Nine Inch Nails, or Trent Reznor’s music, very much. However, the part of the Rolling Stone interview quoted in the Wikipedia entry is actually kind of thought provoking, and softens my attitude towards the man a bit:
Reznor moved out in December of 1993, and the house was demolished in 1994. The owner built a new house on the property, and had the address changed to 10066 Cielo Drive.