Ayoob Massad F. - Newhall shooting -- a tactical analysis : survival lessons from one of law enforcements deadliest shootings

Dedication

Id like to dedicate this book to my mom, Kathleen. For the three decades that my dad patrolled the highways as a Road Warrior, she faithfully kept the light burning for him at home. While he chased bad guys, tended to the wounded, and cleaned up the grisly wrecks, she worked, raised the boys, and anxiously awaited his safe return. She patched his wounds, physical and emotional, kept his Thermos filled with hot coffee for those long Graveyard nights, and never forgot to put an I Love You note in the cup. Being a highway patrolman is tough work. Being the wife of a highway patrolman is tougher. I love you, Mom. You made it look easy even when it wasnt.

Id be remiss if I didnt mention Dads fellow patrolmen, his Band of Brothers. They looked out after each other and kept each other laughing when times were tough. They grew close in that special way that only men who face dangers and horrors together can. I know that Dad was proud to serve with them, to be among them, to call them his friends. To Gary, Bob, Pat, Ken, Tom, Roger, Bud, Phil, Gil, Jay, Bubba, and all the rest, you have my everlasting respect and thanks. Im proud to have been a part of the CHP Family with you.M.W.

Contents

Foreword

By Massad Ayoob

The slaughter of four young California Highway Patrol Officers at Newhall, in 1970, was a watershed experience in the history of American law enforcement. It was the slap in the face that awoke the profession to the fact that its training, collectively, had stagnated. Newhall became the dawn of officer survival training for modern police.

Many lessons were learned in the sacrifice of those four brave men at the hands of two classic examples of feral homo sapiens. Lessons of risk assessment and tactics. The realization that there is a time to approach and a time to fall back and contain. The importance of adequate weapons and of reality-based training and policy.

CHPs honest self-assessment led to sweeping changes in the way police were equipped and in the ways high-risk policing was accomplished. We will never know how many police lives have since been saved by the lessons that grew from the martyrdom of Patrolmen Alleyn, Frago, Gore, and Pence.

Time went on. Memory dimmed. This writer became a law enforcement trainer two years after Newhall, when the tragedy was fresh in the collective mind of the police establishment; CHPs training film on the incident was practically mandatory viewing for cops nationwide. By the twenty-first century, though, we had a generation of young officers for whom Newhall had dropped from the radar screen.

One observer who recognized this was Mike Wood. Not wishing to see the lessons of the tragedy blurred, he began to dig. His fresh eye uncovered details that had not been widely known. Mike reached far beyond the crime scene and into politics and mores of the time. He uncovered salient points that helped us gain a fresh understanding of why four productive lives had been cut so tragically short that night in Newhall.

Mike Woods book is, I think, the best and most comprehensive analysis of the incident yet. It reminds us that the keys to surviving violent encounters must be in place long before they occur. That, in macrocosm, institutional policy must stay focused on reality and not be shaped by political correctness. That in microcosm, those whose duties take them into harms way must be prepared early and constantly to face the worst, and must be trained and equipped to neutralize the most violent and well-equipped human adversaries a dangerous high-tech world can produce.

Mikes analysis of the evidence resolves at least one controversy about the issue. It also gives us a better look at the histories of the four victim officers and the best profile yet of the face of the enemy, with his in-depth reconstruction of the background of the two cop-killers. And, thanks to Mike Wood, another generation of Americas finest has a better opportunity than ever to learn from the sacrifice of those four young state policemen.

Alleyn. Frago. Gore. Pence.

Remember.

Massad Ayoob has been teaching firearms and officer survival tactics since 1972. He served 19 years as the chair of the Firearms and Deadly Force Training Committee of the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, serves presently on the Advisory Board of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, and for more than 30 years has been Law Enforcement Editor of American Handgunner magazine. He may be reached through http://massadayoobgroup.com.

Preface

Officer George M. Alleyn. Photo courtesy of the California Highway Patrol Museum.

Officer Walter C. Frago. Photo courtesy of the California Highway Patrol Museum.

Officer Roger D. Gore. Photo courtesy of the California Highway Patrol Museum.

Officer James E. Pence, Jr. Photo courtesy of the California Highway Patrol Museum.

It has been more than 40 years since the last shots were fired in the driveway of the Standard station and Js Coffee Shop in Newhall, California, so it is only natural for some to question the need for and timing of this book. Why this book? Why now?

Its immediately apparent that the Newhall shooting was an action of great historical significance, as it was the deadliest law enforcement shooting in American history to date. Never before had America seen so many law enforcement officers perish in a single action, and it would be almost four decades before this kind of carnage would be revisited (sadly, twice in the course of a few months). The significance of this event alone justifies an exhaustive reporting, but I had more specific goals in mind when I started on this project.

Foremost in my mind was the desire to honor these brave officers who lost their lives while acting in defense of their community. Each of these men was in the spring of their lives, having just embarked on promising new careers that would allow them to provide for their growing young families, when all was cut short by the gunfire of felons. They left behind wives, children, extended families, and friends that were left holding the shattered pieces of unfinished plans and unfulfilled dreams, and who were forced to endure the long, solitary pain that lives on well after the loss has been erased from fleeting public consciousness.

It didnt seem right that their valorous sacrifice was largely forgotten by the very people they died to protect, and I was determined to reignite a consciousness of that gift. These men and their families deserve our thanks and respect, not only for what they did and what they gave, but for what they represent as defenders of the public against the forces of evil that would otherwise destroy it. They deserve to be honored.

Its with this goal in mind that I gingerly, cautiously approached I am entirely cognizant that any criticisms of the officers and their actions could be misconstrued as a degrading, personal attack on them, but I want to assure the reader that this is not my motivation or intent. These officers acted with great heroism and performed to the very limits of their training and abilities in a frightening, fluid, confusing, and violent action unlike anything most of us will ever face. My evaluation of their actions is not intended to demean them, discredit them, or treat them with any kind of dishonor. Instead, I propose that a thorough analysis that aims at identifying mistakes so that their fellow warriors can learn from them and increase their own survival quotient is the best way to honor their sacrifice. Absent this kind of analysis, the loss of these officers would be purposeless and merely tragic, which is a much greater insult to the memory of these fine men.