Newhall Shooting - A Tactical Analysis. Michael E. Wood
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Dedication
I’d 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 wasn’t.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Dad’s 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. I’m proud to have been a part of the CHP Family with you.—M.W.
Contents
Chapter 3: The Approach and Initial Shots Fired
Chapter 4: The Second Unit Arrives
Chapter 6: The Flanking Movement
Chapter 7: More Backup Arrives
Special Section: Photo Gallery
Section 2: The State of CHP Training in 1970
Chapter 11: Princes of the Highway
Section 3: Analysis of the Newhall Gunfight
Introduction
Chapter 12: Massad Ayoob’s Priorities of Survival
Chapter 13: Mental Awareness and Preparedness
Chapter 14: Proper Use of Tactics
Chapter 15: Skill With the Safety Equipment
Chapter 16: Optimum Choice of Safety Rescue Equipment
Introduction
Chapter 17: The Immediate Aftermath
Chapter 20: State of the Industry
Appendix A: A History of CHP Firearms, Equipment, and Firearms Training
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.
CHP’s 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; CHP’s 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 Wood’s book is, I think, the best and most comprehensive analysis of the incident yet. It reminds us that the keys to surviving violent encounters