Across every occupation are seminal incidents that have had profound repercussions. Engineering disasters, airplane crashes, and industrial accidents are change-making examples. In the law enforcement profession, the murders of four California Highway Patrol officers in Newhall, Calif., on April 6, 1970, would change standing doctrine.
On the graveyard shift of that night, two criminals would inflict a severe wound to the CHP. A traffic stop escalated into a full-blown gunfight that shocked even hardened law enforcement veterans. In dissecting the battle, hard lessons were learned that rippled across the national police training environment.
The Backstory
Bobby Davis and Jack Twining were in the Southern California area of Newhall, casing construction sites for explosives they intended to use in an armored car robbery. While Twining was on foot, Davis became involved in a road rage incident and pointed his handgun at the occupants of a passing car. This led to a call to CHP officers of a “misdemeanor brandishing incident.” Three marked cars began responding.
This account is not meant to criticize the officers, Citizen First Responder (CFR), or witnesses that night. The officers and CFR acted based upon their training and reacted according to their individual abilities to handle stress.
Police training in the late 1960s was vastly different than today’s standards, but we need to be reminded that the instruction the CHP was providing at the time was seen as cutting-edge.
While not lingering on the biographies, it is important to note that Davis and Twining were career criminals with an arsenal of weapons and engaged in felonious activities that night. They would be desperate, formidable opponents in any decade.
First Engagement
Officers Roger Gore and Walter Frago spotted the suspect vehicle, a red 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix, and radioed their location to the two other cruisers. Davis, the driver, pulled into the parking lot of the Standard Gas Station and J’s Coffee Shop at about 11:34 pm. Davis stopped short in the driveway.
Gore and Frago’s marked Dodge Polara was awkwardly caught out of position for a safe encounter, with a ditch on either side. Additionally, the sudden stop meant that backup was still on the way.
As taught in today’s high-risk stops, a tactical retreat to a safer distance is preferable to staying in the kill zone. While it is hard for Type-A cops of any era, discretion can be the better part of survival.
With Gore at the driver’s front of their car and Frago at the passenger front, they initiated what we would call a felony traffic stop. Today, this is where officers would position themselves behind the engine block or at least the doors of their cruiser, create a “wall of light” with high beams and spotlight directed at the occupants, then call the driver and passengers out of their car one at a time.
This modern procedure would normally be effected with two cruisers and two to four officers between the cars. Suspects would be called out, hands up, by a loudspeaker and ordered to first rotate 360 degrees for a visual weapons check, then directed to walk backward between the cruisers where they would be handcuffed and then searched in the officers’ “safe area.”
This was not the procedure the CHP Academy taught to cadets in the 1960s; rather, officers approached the suspect vehicle with one officer contacting the driver and/or passengers while the other officer stood back for support. It was called “Contact and Cover.” On that night, the suspects were not cooperative. After several requests, Davis finally exited the Grand Prix, and Gore approached him at the car. Frago went to the passenger’s side of the Pontiac to extract Twining.
Moments later, Gore and Frago were suddenly shot and killed by the suspects. By dividing their attention, each to a suspect, contact and cover was lost, and the officers were ambushed. I will add that my account of the shootings is fairly abbreviated, as a full accounting would require, say, something of a book’s length. A most thorough analysis of that night comes in the book, “Newhall Shooting.”
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Author Mike Wood did painstaking work to research the incident in depth. He provides a breakdown using Massad Ayoob’s Priorities of Survival. Mr. Ayoob also penned a foreword to the book. My thanks to both gentlemen for adding this to my own research.
Back-Up Arrives
The first two murders occurred within a minute of the stop. A minute after that, the second responding car, with Ofc’s James Pence, Jr. and George Alleyn arrived. They parked just to the left of Gore’s cruiser. They were immediately fired upon by the suspects. Pence radioed an “11-99,” Officer Needs Assistance, and “Shots fired, J’s Standard!”
After emptying the deceased officers’ revolvers at Pence and Alleyn, the suspects entered the Grand Prix and rearmed themselves with a sawed-off shotgun and .45 cal. automatic. As bullets struck their cruiser, Pence drew his revolver, and Alleyn grabbed the car’s shotgun. They took up positions on the outer sides of both cruisers and returned fire. During the exchange, both Twining and Alleyn were struck by shotgun pellets.
Alleyn discarded his now empty shotgun near the rear of Gore’s car. With his revolver, he engaged both suspects and then raised over the trunk to fire from a better vantage. But he was shot in the head and chest by Davis, who had advanced on the cruiser. After another shotgun blast, Alleyn lay mortally wounded at the back of the cruiser.
Davis had emptied his shotgun. He picked up Frago’s shotgun and retrieved the officer’s holstered revolver, both fully loaded. Retreating to the Grand Prix, Davis fired several more shots at the downed Alleyn. It was about this time in the battle that a Citizen First Responder entered the fray.
A Citizen Engages
Former Marine Gary Kness was on his way to work as a computer operator at a nearby business. He observed the CHP cruisers and gunfight. When Alleyn slumped behind the trunk, Kness decided to take action. He parked a safe distance away and ran to Alleyn. At first, Kness tried to get Alleyn out of the kill zone by dragging him by his gun belt, but this did not work.
Kness saw Davis moving toward them. Kness picked up Alleyn’s shotgun and dropped the firing pin on an empty chamber, whereupon he ran the slide and triggered it again without result. All four shells had already been expended by Alleyn. Davis saw Kness with the shotgun and initially retreated but realized Kness had an unloaded weapon. As Davis began another charge, Kness armed himself with Alleyn’s revolver.
Kness described using a two-handed “combat grip,” braced his elbows on the trunk, and fired Alleyn’s revolver from single-action at Davis. Bullet fragments from a ricochet impacted Davis, who then retreated. Kness again tried to get Alleyn clear but heard the siren of the third responding CHP cruiser. Out of ammunition and with help en route, Kness made the difficult decision to withdraw, but he had accomplished all that a Citizen First Responder could have, given the circumstances.
Unfortunately, Ofc. Pence was now being flanked by Twining. Attempting a reload of his empty gun at the rear of the cruiser from a dump pouch, Pence was ready to close the fully loaded cylinder of his revolver and re-enter the battle when Twining assassinated him. The suspects then retreated to the Grand Prix.
Additional Back-Up
As Ofc’s Ed Holmes and Richard Robinson pulled on scene, still further back from the other two cruisers, Twining fired a last ineffective shot at Robinson. Holmes discharged his revolver twice, once missing Twining and again, which hit the fleeing suspect vehicle. The gunfight was over.
Four lawmen had been murdered before the third cruiser arrived. Ofc. Holmes notified base that at least two officers were “11-44,” Deceased. My thoughts go out to Holmes in his unenviable broadcast. In my career, I have unfortunately made the same tragic radio call to dispatch.
After abandoning the Grand Prix at a dead-end, the suspects ran off on foot in different directions. Twining briefly took a hostage at a residential home but killed himself during the ensuing police standoff. Davis was captured and tried. His death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the State of California. He died behind bars.
Felony Car Stops
While I have touched on the felony traffic stop aspect of the incident, there existed more training deficiencies at the time. When Ofc. Gore approached Davis, he did what he had been taught in the CHP Academy and began to search Davis before handcuffing him.
This was a fatal mistake. Today’s law enforcement officers are instructed to physically control and handcuff any suspect prior to a search. Always. While Gore was engaged in searching Davis, things were also going wrong on the other side of the car.
Ofc. Frago approached the Grand Prix with his shotgun at port arms, or barrel angled up, as he tried to open Twining’s door. This tactical error began the gunfight. Twining saw an advantage and immediately shot Frago. Davis followed suit and killed Gore.
The CHP Academy included “Enforcement Tactics” in its curriculum. This is where felony car stops and contact and cover were demonstrated. Unfortunately, in a 900-hour academy, only six hours of practical training were allocated to these most important measures.
Marksmanship Standards
In the 1960s, CHP cops were taught either one-handed bullseye shooting or the “FBI crouch,” a one-handed, hip-shooting technique intended as a combat method. Neither was very effective in a gun battle.
Witnesses to the Newhall murders stated that several of the officers shot their revolvers with one hand, some while steadying themselves on their cruisers with the other hand. It is no wonder that the .357 Magnum bullets fired by the officers did not find their marks.
While hip-shooting at very, very close-range targets is still part of my state’s LE qualification course, a two-handed grip on the pistol in an Isosceles stance is the most often taught method for accurately putting rounds in the high-center chest, head’s t-zone, or pelvic girdle.
Revolver Reloads
CHP Officers in Newhall that night relied on reloading their issued revolvers via “dump pouches,” where loose rounds fell into the officer’s hand by gravity when the snap and flap were dropped. Speed loaders were not widely available to cops until a decade after this shooting.
Dump pouches, speed loaders, and speed strips are notoriously slow for getting a wheelgun back in the fight. Loose rounds are by far the most laborious. Ofc. Pence, under fire and wounded by four bullets from Twining’s gun, finished reloading the cylinder, but did not get it into battery before Twining snuck in and ended his life.
While the technology of speed loaders was not yet used by CHP, the concept of a partial reload, or tactical revolver reload, could have been employed from a dump pouch. If Pence had plussed up his .357 Magnum with just two or three rounds, then re-engaged the advancing Twining, he may have saved his own life. Again, it was a training deficiency and not of the officer’s doing.
Overall accuracy of the officers may have been influenced by the CHP Academy routinely training with lesser .38 Special rounds and not the full-power .357 Magnum bullets that they were issued for on-duty carry.
It has been repeated since the Newhall shooting that Pence “died with spent brass in his pocket.” Likely, this was the assumption because after the murders, the CHP Academy changed its policy on immediately policing up brass during cadets’ time on the firing line. Crime scene photographs and the post-mortem of the fight showed that the spent cases from Pence’s six fired rounds were found on the ground near his body.
In U.S. Border Patrol lawman Bill Jordan’s acclaimed book, “No Second Place Winner,” Jordan articulated a story about Border Patrol Ofc. Sam McKone. After what Jordan wryly described as “a discussion with some contrabandistas,” McKone found that when the gunplay ended, he had unknowingly put spent rounds in his pocket, as was his habit on the range as a hand reloader. Jordan likened this to reverting to training. Page 106, if you are interested.
This, along with the change in CHP range protocols, may have fostered the inaccurate story about Pence retrieving his own spent brass. In any event, the actual evidence proved the tale to be categorically untrue. Pence was vindicated.
Shotgun Use
CHP fielded shotguns for many years. If you are familiar with the manual of arms for such a weapon, you know that a pump scattergun needs constant reloading during its martial use. Four rounds in the tube are not always sufficient in a fight. The more shells, the better. Extended magazines and side saddle carriers were not fielded by the police in the 1960s.
Nor were shotgun slings issued. Bandolier-type slings could have carried more shotshells for upping the gun. Slings are now also seen as essential on shotguns and rifles for weapon retention and indexing the long gun during hands-on activity or in failure drills.
As to stress, Ofc. Alleyn racked a round into his shotgun on entering the chaos. Shotguns were, and still are, loaded in a “cruiser-safe” mode with an empty chamber and four shotshells in the magazine. In the heat of the fight, Alleyn re-racked his slide at the front of the cruiser and ejected a live shell. Training repetition can build consistency, but action under pressure will dictate effectiveness.
Citizen First Responder
It is inspiring to read about Gary Kness’ courage to enter the fight and attempt to assist the downed officers. In my Citizen First Responders article, I discussed Situational Awareness, Medical Training, Tactical Considerations, Equipment Choices, and Legal Implications. I think we can agree that it would have discouraged the suspects if Kness had brought his own firearm and conviction to the scene.
In Summary
The murders of four California Highway Patrol officers in April of 1970 were gut-wrenching, but forced the law enforcement profession as a whole to examine what transpired and to remedy its deficiencies.
Current police procedures and equipment have evolved. For this, we owe a respectful debt of gratitude for the ultimate sacrifices made during the events of that terrible night.
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