The “Perry Mason” mentioned in the headline was actually “The New Perry Mason”, in which she played “Della Street” opposite Monte Markham’s Perry Mason. It lasted one season. Other credits include three “Quincy, M.E.” appearances, “The Rockford Files”, “Hec Ramsey”, “The Bold Ones: The Senator”, and a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Authorities tracked him down in Tennessee yesterday. There was a confrontation with FBI agents, and Mr. McGrath was shot. He died in a local hospital. At this point, it isn’t clear if his wound was self-inflicted or if he was shot by the FBI.
Credits include the titular character in “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins”, “Sgt. Hoke Moseley” in “Miami Blues”, “Quincy M.E.”, “Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann”, “Tremors”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Det. Harry Philip Lovecraft” in “Cast A Deadly Spell”.
Bruce MacVittie. Other credits include “Waterfront”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Spenser: For Hire” and “The Equalizer”.
(Side note: “one of New York City’s main police unions”? You may be asking: how many police unions does NYC have? Mike the Musicologist asked me that same question a while back, in relation to a different scandal. Other than the Sergeants Benevolent Association, there’s also the Police Benevolent Association, which represents the line officers, and the Detectives Endowment Association, which represents the detective ranks. It isn’t clear to me if the command ranks (above sergeant) and the civilian staff have their own unions.)
Chick Vennera, one of those knock-around actors. Credits include “Thank God It’s Friday”, “The Milagro Beanfield War”, and a lot of TV, including “The Golden Girls” and voice work on “Animaniacs”.
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.
I haven’t posted any vintage police training videos in a while, because I really haven’t been finding any. At least, none have been popping up in my YouTube feed.
However, I went looking for a specific FBI video that Bill Vanderpool mentioned in his book, Guns of the F.B.I. : A History of the Bureau’s Firearms and Training. (Longer write up about that book to come.) I couldn’t find it, but I did find this:
“Officer Down Code Three” from 1975. This is one of those Motorola videos, but the quality of the transfer seems to me to be a bit higher. It is also interesting for another reason: this video is adapted from Pierce R. Brooks’s book of the same name.
Officer Down Code Three is considered by some to be the first “officer survival” book. It precedes the somewhat more famous Street Survival by about five years.
Today is the 34th anniversary of the FBI Miami shootout, perhaps the most studied (and most influential) gunfight in history. Very brief summary: eight FBI agents confronted two men who had been robbing banks and armoured cars. The confrontation ended in a firefight, in which two FBI agents (Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan) were killed and five more were injured (three of them seriously). The two suspects were shot and killed by Agent Ed Mireles, who was one of the agents seriously injured. (Agent Dove inflicted what would have been an eventually fatal wound on one of the suspects, but it was not an immediate stopper: the man Agent Dove shot kept fighting until Agent Mireles got in a finishing shot at close range.)
This is the second of the three events I mentioned in an earlier post. I went back and forth about doing a longer post on this event, and ended up deciding to do a short one instead. This isn’t a round number anniversary, and I’d really like to do more prep work before doing a longer post: next year is the 35th anniversary, and that seems like a good target. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let this anniversary pass without notice.
In the meantime, if you want to dig beyond the Wikipedia entry, I’d start with Ed Mireles’s book: I’m still in the process of reading it, but this has the “Hell, I was there!” factor going for it. Here’s a review of it (with bonus material) from great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn.
The other book I often see cited, and which has been recommended to me, is “Forensic Analysis Of The April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight” by W. French Anderson, which is violently expensive. Then again, this is kind of a specialized publication: I don’t know what it went for when it came out in 2006. (Plus, it was published by the now-defunct Paladin Press.)
“Dark Day in Suniland” was put together by Bob Gilmartin, a local TV reporter who also wrote the forward to Agent Mireles’s book. This documentary came out a year after the event.
Over at Karl’s site, he has another video that combines the FBI reconstruction video, “Firefight” and another video with personal reflections from the agents.
There is a made for TV movie, “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” based on this event, but Agent Mireles states in his book that “dramatic effect apparently took precedence over some of the facts”.
The other agents involved were:
SA Richard Manauzzi.
Supervisor Gordon McNeill (seriously injured).
SA Gilbert Orrantia.
SA John Hanlon (seriously injured).
SA Ronald Risner.
Sort of a break today. These are kind of police-related videos, but they’re also directly relevant to my interests, and I hope to the interests of at least some of my readers.
First up: “The Fundamentals Of Double Action Revolver Shooting”. This has Air Force/DoD tags on it, but it looks like it was produced by the FBI and dates to 1961.
Bonus video #1: “Shooting for Survival”, a FBI video from sometime in the 1970s, back when they were still using revolvers.
Bonus video #2: Sometimes the short ones are the best. “Training With the Speedloader”, a 1988 Indiana State Police video on how to use the revolver speedloader. Those are Safariland speedloaders, which happen to be the ones I prefer.
Some people might find that the scenario at the start of this video reminds them of something else.