You know, the police do have things other than cars and guns.
For example, tear gas. (Sorry: this is a bit on the longer side.)
As best as I can tell, the Lake Erie Chemical Company (a good Cleveland firm) eventually merged with/was acquired by Bangor Punta. Bangor Punta also owned Smith and Wesson during this period, and was trying to become a one-stop shop conglomerate for everything the well equipped police department needed: guns, tear gas, holsters, handcuffs, helmets…
Bonus video: here’s a slice of 1970s cheese for you. “Anything Can Happen”, a 1973 police recruiting film…
…a British police recruiting film. Those fashions! That music!
I especially appreciate the fact that this is subtitled.
Back on the beat today, since it is Saturday: I have some lighter stuff to post, but I’m saving that for the Sabbath. These will be good to watch if you get tired of tonight’s “Most Shocking” marathon on the Justice Network (or if it is an episode you’ve already seen). They are also a bit longer (but it’s a weekend, so you don’t have to worry about fitting these into your coffee breaks). And I’ll warn everyone: the effects in these, especially the second one, are a little graphic.
First up: “Officer Survival: High Risk Patrol Tactics”. I think this title is a little misleading, as it deals less with patrol: the instructional point of this video is basically how to deal with armed, barricaded suspects.
Bonus video: “Vehicle Stop Tactics”. This one features a lot of the mistakes police officers made in “routine” stops. The latter part of this one (roughly the second half) also demonstrates how to do a high-risk felony stop correctly, so it kind of overlaps “Felony Vehicle Stop“.
All of these are just a little outside my target run length, but that’s okay. I hope everyone can deal with that.
First up: this might be just a little too much, even for my readers who are people of the gun. But I wanted to put it up because it is a nice slice of history from around the time I was born.
“Target Vs.”, a 1965 film from the Williams Gun Sight company about the 1965 National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio.
I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to compete at Camp Perry, but I’d like to visit there one of these days while the matches are going on. Just to take in the scene.
Bonus video #1: “No Points For Second Place”. This is apparently a Grumman produced tribute to the F-14. With some handy tips on dogfighting thrown in.
Bonus video #2: “Police Pursuit Driving Part 2”. I guess this is a sequel (at least thematically) to “Police Pursuit“, but it lacks Jack Webb. I think it also lacks Smith and Wessons, though there is one ridiculous bit in here (you’ll know it when you see it).
I cannot tell a lie: “Some guys stay rookies forever.” gets a rise out of me.
Back on the beat, but this time something a little different: “Play It Cool: A Question of Attitudes”, a police training film from the 1960s about civility.
Bonus video #1: this is relevant to my interests. “Basic Principles Of Power Reactors”, put together long enough ago that it was done by the Atomic Energy Commission.
Bonus video #2: “Viet Cong Mines and Booby Traps”, a 1967 Marine Corps training film.
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.
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.
Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)
This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)
LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:
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.
Robert Barth. He was a pioneering Navy diver: he was the only person involved with both the Genesis dry land test and all three iterations of the Sealab underwater habitats.
Fifty years ago today, just before midnight on April 5, 1970, two California Highway Patrol officers, Walt Frago and Roger Gore, stopped a car with two men in it. There had been reports that a similar vehicle had been involved in a road rage incident a short time before.
The two men in the car, Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, were heavily armed criminals. They had been planning the theft of explosives from a construction site near where they were stopped. Davis had dropped Twinning off earlier in the evening to scope out the construction site (other sources say that they were testing walkie-talkies they planned to use in the robbery, and that Twinning was taking some target practice), made an illegal U-turn across a highway median, and brandished a firearm at a driver he nearly hit. The display of the firearm was what prompted the call to CHP: the responding officers had no knowledge of Twinning and Davis’s criminal past, their plan to steal explosives, or of the weapons they had in the car. As a matter of fact, the initial report stated that there was only one occupant in the car.
When they were stopped, the two men initially refused to exit the vehicle. Gore managed to clear Davis from the car and started to frisk him. But before they could get Twinning out of the car, he shot and killed Officer Frago. Officer Gore shot back at Twinning, but was shot by Davis at close range.
Two other officers, James Pence and George Alleyn, were nearby and responded as backup for Gore and Frago. They got to the scene just after Office Gore was killed and immediately came under fire from Twinning and Davis. Alleyn fired on Davis with his issue shotgun, but was unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of rounds. He then drew his issue sidearm and continued to fire on Davis, but was hit with multiple rounds of 00 buckshot from Davis’s sawed-off shotgun and killed.
A nearby citizen, Gary Kness, tried to help the officers, returning fire with Alleyn’s service revolver, but was also unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of ammo.
Officer Pence emptied his revolver at Twinning and had to reload. CHP did not issue speed loaders at the time. He loaded six rounds and was closing the cylinder on his revolver when Twinning snuck up behind him and killed him.
Twinning and Davis fled as a third CHP unit arrived. Davis broke into a camper, pistol-whipped the occupant, and stole the vehicle. CHP was informed, stopped the camper, and Davis (who at this point had no loaded guns) surrendered. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. He apparently committed suicide in his cell in August of 2009.
Twinning broke into a house and took an occupant hostage. The house was surrounded by police, and after a several hour standoff, they deployed tear gas and stormed the house. Twinning killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from Officer Frago.
None of the officers had been with CHP for more than two years. Three out of the four probably would have survived if they had been wearing soft body armor, but this was 1970: bulletproof vests at the time were heavy and bulky, and Richard Davis didn’t design the first Second Chance vest until 1976.
This is one of those moments in history that justifies the use of the phrase “agonizing reappraisal”. After the incident, CHP authorized, and then started issuing, speed loaders. CHP also reevaluated their training, and shared their investigative findings widely. Ultimately, the Newhall incident was one of the events that kicked off the “officer survival” movement in the US.
Mr. Ayoob’s followup, “New Info On Newhall“, is available online at the AH website, as is a third article focusing on Gary Kness and Daniel Schwartz (the camper owner): “The Armed Citizens Of Newhall”.
I’ve been looking at California newspapers thinking there would be a retrospective, but I haven’t found one. If I do, I’ll add it here.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, Gary Kness is still alive (he’d be around 82 today). He was honored by CHP for his efforts to save the officers, and is regarded as a hero by the California Highway Patrol to this day.
If anybody has anything to add about this incident (hi, Karl!) please feel welcome to leave a comment. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, but some of the information out there is contradictory, incomplete, or inaccurate.
Back to real police work. While it wasn’t on my radar when I started this last week, it turns out that I am building up to a post tomorrow. (I’m not going to stop after tomorrow, though.)
Interestingly, there are two major events that took place in different years, but within a week of each other in April, that I want to make note of. There’s also a third event that took place in early May 40 years ago that I plan to note as well.
Bonus video #1: great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent me this one, and I already had it on the list. I’ve been a little hesitant to post it, because the quality isn’t all that great, but it has two things I can’t resist:
Bonus video #2: “Shotgun or Sidearm?”, another police training film explaining when it is appropriate to use each weapon. This might be educational for some of my readers who are not people of the gun.
Steven Levy’s book on the case, The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius is available in a Kindle edition, and that’s probably the way to go if you want to read it. (As far as I know, that’s the only book about the case, though it was written before Einhorn’s capture and extradition: I don’t know if Levy updated subsequent editions or the Kindle version.)
Last night, I realized that we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of a historic (and awful) event. I’m working on a post that will go up on that date, which is a few days away.
In the meantime, I thought maybe I’d post some things that are thematically appropriate for the anniversary of that event.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, what’s the right way to do a felony vehicle stop?”
Well, now you know. Or at least, now you know what the recommended procedure was in 1973.
I would ordinarily say, “Don’t try this at home”, but if your home life is such that you’re thinking about doing felony vehicle stops there, nothing I can say is really going to make any difference.
…I’m gonna go have me some fun!
And what do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun!”
–Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”
Now that I’m on indefinite home confinement (like the rest of Travis County) I’ve found myself not just reading more, but also watching more crap on YouTube.
“Crap” may not actually be fair. I’ve enjoyed the USCSB videos for a while now. AOPA’s Air Safety Institute videos are educational as well. And, yes, I’ve been watching my share of Ian’s videos in these times of struggle. Shamefully, I’ve also been watching clips from “Bar Rescue”.
My point, and I do have one, is: some interesting things have been showing up in my YouTube recommendations, and I thought I’d start highlighting those. At least, until the crisis passes.
Rules: I want to keep them short, and ideally want to pick ones that people haven’t heard of. So no “Surviving Edged Weapons”, because that’s close to an hour and half and has been highlighted on Red Letter Media. But I think at least some of these will be vintage police training videos…
…let’s start with this one, “Vehicle Ambush: Counterattacks”. If for no other reason than that awesome 1970’s wakka jawakka opening soundtrack.
Tomorrow: I’m trying to decide if I want to go with Jack Webb (although I don’t think the video quality is all that great) or possibly a vintage US Navy training film. (Nothing about VD, though.)
Lawrence sent over an obit for Roy Hudd, prominent British actor. He played “Archie Shuttleworth” on “Coronation Street”, and, according to Lawrence, did a fair amount of horror.