Category: Cops
Categories
Florida Man
A report from New Jersey’s comptroller criticizes Street Cop Training for encouraging illegal traffic stops.
Street Cop Training founder Dennis Benigno (New Jersey State Comptroller)
If a driver looks away while passing a police car, cops learn from a checklist promoted at an October 2021 conference in Atlantic City, that is suspicious. But if a driver stares at the police car, that is also suspicious. Hats work both ways too: Wearing one “low to cover [your] face” is suspicious, but so is removing a hat when you are stopped by the police. Other telltale signs of criminal activity, according to Street Cop Training’s list of “reasonable suspicion factors,” include texting, smoking, lip licking, yawning, stretching, talking to a passenger while keeping your eyes on the road, signaling a turn early or late, maintaining “awkward closeness” or “awkward distance” during a stop, standing parallel or perpendicular to the car, saying you are heading to work or heading home, questioning the reason for the stop, and refusing permission for a search.
That Street Cop Training checklist, which offers handy excuses for officers keen to conduct searches for drugs or seizable cash, figures prominently in a recent report from Kevin Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller. The report criticizes the New Jersey company for encouraging officers to make or extend stops without reasonable suspicion and for promoting a “warrior” mentality that fosters the excessive use of force. “We found so many examples of so many instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal,” Walsh said when he released the report this week. “The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms—and New Jersey dollars paid for it—is outrageous.”
Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, who was a Woodbridge, New Jersey, police officer until 2015. Each year the company, which Benigno describes as “one of the largest, if not the largest, police training providers in the United States,” trains about 25,000 officers from agencies across the country. The six-day Atlantic City seminar that Walsh describes in his report attracted nearly 1,000 officers, including 240 from New Jersey. Their employers covered the expenses, which included a $499 fee for each officer, travel and lodging, and paid time off.
What did taxpayers get for their money? Potentially, Walsh argues, greater exposure to more expenses down the road, including millions of dollars spent to litigate and settle civil rights lawsuits. “This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents,” Walsh’s report says. “The costs of attendance for training like this is small in comparison to the potential liability for lawsuits involving excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and harassment and discrimination.”
While “some of the observations and reasoning” described in Street Cop’s checklist “find support in case law,” Walsh says, “others appear to be arbitrary and contradictory.” Officers who follow Benigno’s advice therefore may end up violating the Fourth Amendment by making or prolonging stops based on factors that fall short of reasonable suspicion. If so, any resulting searches also would be unconstitutional, making any evidence they discover inadmissible.
Beyond the checklist, Benigno suggested during presentations at the conference that a driver’s refusal to allow a search can support reasonable suspicion or probable cause. For example, he showed “a montage of people refusing consent in an attempt to illustrate that a motorist’s refusal to consent is a suspicious factor that justifies further prolonging an investigative detention.” If you have nothing to hide, in other words, why wouldn’t you let a cop paw through your possessions on the side of the road? Surely the inconvenience, indignity, and public embarrassment are a small price to pay for helping the police protect the public.
That reasoning is legally as well as logically dubious. In New Jersey, Walsh notes, “it has been long settled that the police must have reasonable suspicion of criminality before they ask for consent to search a motor vehicle.” And “even outside of New Jersey, many courts have found that a ‘refusal to consent to a search cannot itself form the basis for reasonable suspicion.'”
One Street Cop instructor, Hobart, Indiana, police Sgt. Kenny Williams, seems to make a practice of stopping motorists without reasonable suspicion. In Indiana, Williams noted, the speed limit for trucks is 65 miles per hour, while the speed limit for cars is 70. “There is no fucking way that any car should ever be behind a semi if they have the ability to pass it,” Williams said. “When you do that,” he explained, “if you are coming through Indiana, I am going to fucking stop your ass.”
Another speaker at the conference, Boston police officer Tommy Brooks, suggested pulling over “20 people in a row for the sole purpose of asking them a series of questions,” such as where they are coming from and where they are going. That experiment, Brooks said, would establish a “general baseline” of “how people answer questions,” which the officer could later use to identify “weird” responses from other drivers. Helpful or not, the research project that Brooks recommended would be blatantly unconstitutional. “Without an objectively reasonable basis for the stop,” Walsh notes, “those stops, as described, would violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable seizures.”
Even when a driver is legally pulled over for a traffic violation, the encounter is supposed to last no longer than is necessary to complete the purpose of the stop unless the officer has enough evidence to support reasonable suspicion of other illegal conduct. At the Street Cop conference, Brad Gilmore, a narcotics detective with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, suggested a way around that constraint: “finger-fucking” your computer or “playing Tetris.” In other words, Walsh says, Gilmore “endorsed a practice of pretending to conduct a computer lookup so an officer can illegally but surreptitiously continue an investigation during a motor vehicle stop that should have already concluded.”
Another trick suggested by “multiple instructors,” Walsh says, involves returning at least one of the driver’s documents (such as his license or his insurance card) and/or assuring him that the stop will end with a warning rather than a ticket. While those techniques might make a driver more patient or more cooperative, Walsh notes, they cannot legitimize “a stop that has been illegally prolonged.”
The report also faults Street Cop for encouraging “a hyper-vigilant ‘warrior’ mentality” that views “every interaction with a civilian” as “a potential deadly threat.” Benigno, for example, told the cops at the conference they should always keep in mind that their work could “take your fucking life in a second” and to “treat every motor vehicle stop as if you are going to die and you might just live.” Throughout the conference, Walsh says, speakers “made comments glorifying violence and the application of military techniques to policing.”
In September, while Walsh was conducting his investigation, the New Jersey State Police told its employees they should stop taking Street Cop courses. There was more apparent fallout on Thursday, when New Jersey prosecutors abruptly dropped drug charges against Francisco A. Paulino-Edua, who was arrested in 2017 by Gilmore, one of the Street Cop instructors. In addition to criticizing Gilmore for endorsing illegally extended traffic stops, Walsh describes him as encouraging insubordination and making light of internal affairs investigations.
“This officer’s believability and credibility were so suspect that the government could not back up a prosecution based on his behavior,” Paulino-Edua’s lawyer, Brian Neary, told The New York Times. Neary predicted that Walsh’s investigation is “going to open up a floodgate” as other cases come into question because of the policing tactics that Street Cop promotes.
Situation: Over a span of years, a lawman is forced to fire at three violent, armed criminals.
Lesson: Action beats reaction, so you must be committed to reacting immediately. The more intelligence you can gather before a confrontation, the better. And sometimes, the way your department treats you can be more traumatic than the incident itself.
I met Richard Rippy when I was an expert witness working for the defense in the United States v. Richard Palmer case. It was a Federal criminal case against a Lake County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy charged in a furtive movement shooting. Rippy had been the accused officer’s firearms and deadly force instructor. His input had been pivotal in allowing a defense team led by Attorneys Alan Diamond and Kepler Funk to win a total acquittal. Rippy had helped us to establish that in a dangerous incident in the darkness, Palmer had done what he had been trained to do, and what he had been trained was in keeping with best practices.
In the course of preparing for the case, I learned Rippy himself had been involved in three fatal line-of-duty shootings during his own 32 years of service, first as a municipal police officer with the City of Eustis, Fla., from which he retired as a sergeant and then with the Lake County, Fla. Sheriff’s Office, retiring for good with the rank of lieutenant in 2019. I suspected his experiences would impart valuable lessons to our readers. That turned out to be the correct assessment.
Background
As a young U.S. Marine, Rippy had gone through Primary Marksmanship Instructor School. When he left the USMC to enter domestic law enforcement in 1987, he joined the 25-man police department of the City of Eustis in Lake County, Fla. It was policy that an officer had to serve on the job for years before being considered as an instructor, but his USMC background earned him a waiver, and he was soon a police firearms instructor, taking every advanced course he could find.
He started out with the department issue service revolver, S&W’s Model 19 .357 Combat Magnum. In 1991 Eustis PD joined the rest of the nation in the switch to the semi-automatic service pistol, and he was issued a 16-shot .40 caliber GLOCK 22. Shortly after that transition, the GLOCK would be used in his first officer-involved shooting.
Madman With A Knife
December 23, 1991, 7:47 p.m. Rippy is one of several officers dispatched to a call at an apartment complex. A citizen has reported an emotionally disturbed person has been shaking people down in the hallways with a large knife. Lt. Mike Whittaker, the watch commander, leads Rippy and Officers Joel Tart and Jeff Breedlove to the top of the stairs in time to see the suspect running toward them.
The man ducks into an apartment, from which the legitimate resident emerges on crutches moments later, shouting, “He’s got a knife!”
Hoping he can reason with the suspect, the lieutenant leads from the front as the officers make entry, single file, with Rippy second in line behind the lieutenant. Passing through a narrow hallway into the living room, Breedlove flanks to the left behind their leader and Rippy to the right.
And suddenly, the knife-wielder is coming toward them. Rippy, thoroughly familiar with Dennis Tueller’s research proving the average adult male can close seven yards with a knife in a second and a half, instantly realizes the maniac is way too close to the lieutenant, who attempts to backpedal to create distance. But the lieutenant’s rearward path is blocked by a coffee table, and he loses his balance, and the six-foot, 200-lb. assailant is barely more than a step away from him, lunging with the big knife upraised in an icepick hold.
The room erupts into gunfire.
Rippy’s GLOCK is in a two-handed Weaver stance, and he is looking over the top of the pistol, not trying to aim, as he unleashes four rapid shots. Breedlove is firing also. The knifeman collapses before he can reach the lieutenant.
The officers secure the blood-soaked would-be cop killer and attempt first aid, but it proves useless. Rippy’s 165-grain jacketed hollow points have hit “center mass,” and a bullet from Breedlove’s G22 has destroyed the thumb of the knife hand. The deceased, John Lemberg, turns out to have no criminal record but a long history of serious mental health issues.
It was over for Lemberg but not for Rippy. He would remember later, “We didn’t have a lot of officer-involved shootings back then, and the department didn’t have a protocol in place. We were placed on administrative leave. FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) investigated the shooting and we were cleared by them and even by the Grand Jury. During that time, they sent us for psychological evaluations. They told me I had failed without telling me why and the department didn’t seem to know what to do. Finally, they sent me for a second psych eval, and I was told I had passed. I was finally back at work after being out on leave for two months and never having been told why I hadn’t passed the first evaluation.”
Murderer With A 9mm
March 11, 1996, 5:11 a.m. It has been a busy few shifts in Eustis and surrounding areas. There have been too many BOLOs (Be On the Lookout) alerts for all the officers to read, but Rippy has learned that earlier in the night, another officer had taken a burglary report that sounded more like a drug rip-off. Later the department received an anonymous tip that the suspect was at the Caramar Hotel in Eustis. Rippy is one of the officers who responds.
The plan is a “knock and talk.” When the hotel room door opens, Rippy is surprised to see not a stereotyped “drug thug” but a well-groomed black man about 5’10” and 170 lbs. wearing a suit and tie. The cop’s first impression is “preacher or businessman” and he wonders if the tip was bogus.
He does not know he is face to face with Derrek Williams, who has come to the city to do a burglary and rob people of drugs. Moreover, Williams has done a carjacking in nearby Lakeland in which he has shot and killed an elderly man and woman and has shot and wounded another victim in a drug transaction not far away in Leesburg.
And Williams is carrying a loaded S&W 5906 9mm under his impeccable suit.
Out of habit, Rippy politely asks Williams if he could put his hands on the dresser so the officer can pat him down. The unexpected response is, “I’ve been doing drugs tonight.” Rippy responds placatingly, “I’m not concerned about that.” A seemingly compliant Williams places his hands on the dresser as told.
As Rippy’s hands go to Williams’ waistband, so, suddenly, do the suspect’s own hands. And the killer explodes into movement, spinning to his right, away from Rippy — and coming up with the silver-colored semiautomatic. The muzzle of the S&W is at Rippy’s forehead in an instant. He is staring down the barrel. And he sees Williams’ finger pull the trigger.
There is no shot. Rippy explodes into defensive action, shoving Williams away from him and reaching for his own pistol. Williams turns and runs toward the bathroom. Rippy follows his GLOCK up now, firing. The gunman disappears into the bathroom.
Rippy hears the “tap-rack” sound of his deadly opponent manipulating his pistol and then a single muffled gunshot and a thud.
It is over almost as quickly as it began. Derrek Williams has shot himself in the head. His death was instantaneous.
Reconstruction would show the would-be cop killer had apparently been nervously manipulating his pistol earlier in the evening, taking the loaded magazine in and out of the 9mm. The Model 5906, like all commercially sold third-generation S&W auto pistols, had a magazine disconnector safety that would not allow the chambered round to fire unless the magazine was fully seated. When Williams pulled the trigger on Rippy, the magazine had not been locked into place. That saved Rippy’s life.
Rippy was shocked to discover none of his bullets hit the offender. He fired while both men were running. He had not tried to use his sights because he hadn’t thought there was time.
Once again, the investigation showed the officer had acted properly, but the department’s psych eval came back saying Rippy had failed. He would tell American Handgunner years later, “They never told me why I had failed. I was asking myself, ‘Do they have some preconception of what I’m supposed to say, and I’m not saying it? Do they think I’m being too matter-of-fact about it?’ I did what I had to do, and I told them so. I had a conversation with the department, was told I was cleared to come back to work, and that was that.”
Abuser With A .45
Rippy had transferred from Eustis PD to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, a larger agency headquartered in Tavares, Fla., employing more than 500 sworn personnel. LCSO issued the same service pistol, the G22, but with 180-grain jacketed hollow point .40 S&W ammunition.
August 26, 2011, 5:01 p.m. William Hall, a ruggedly built blond-haired white guy weighing about 185 lbs., has barely been out of prison after serving a drug-related sentence when his wife calls in a domestic abuse complaint. Rippy and other deputies determine Hall has gone to a neighbor’s house.
As they approach the dwelling, Hall unexpectedly emerges. Rippy can see the man is holding a 1911 pistol to his own head as he approaches the deputies. Rippy draws his GLOCK and yells at him repeatedly to drop the gun.
The distance closes quickly. Rippy shouts a final command to drop the gun.
Instead, Hall swings the pistol down and points it at Rippy.
The lawman fires first. Two-handed, point shoulder rather than aim, indexed on center mass. The bullets strike the center torso, and Hall falls heavily to his side, down before he can trigger what turns out to be a Springfield .45. Hall will not survive.
It is over, just that quickly. More than a decade after this, his last shooting, the retired lieutenant will tell American Handgunner, “I’m sure it was a suicide by cop. I couldn’t let him get any closer. We were five to seven yards apart when I shot him. The Sheriff’s Office had a better protocol than the city did when I worked there. FDLE conducted the investigation, and it was also cleared by the State’s Attorney’s Office. This time, there was no psych eval, though LCSO encouraged us to seek psychological counseling if we wanted it.”
Lessons
Most law enforcement officers will go their careers without having to fire their duty weapons at anyone. But obviously, most is not all. When we outsiders analyze these cases, we learn a lot. One thing we learn is that the involved officer himself is a priceless resource for lessons because no one will have thought about it so much as the individual who lived through it. Given his extensive training and experience as an instructor, Rick Rippy is positioned to provide particularly valuable insights into the three fatal shootings he personally experienced.
Proximity can be deadly. In each of these three shootings, a call for service brought Rippy and his brother officers to the scene, and in each case, the perpetrator’s actions “closed the gap.” Action beats reaction. The offender gets to be the actor and forces you to be the reactor. The closer he gets, the less time you have in which to react. This means you must be committed beforehand to look for and react appropriately to deadly stimuli — if this, then that! In each case, Rippy’s ability to do so saved his own life and the lives of other officers present. It is a lesson he has emphasized to the many officers he trained throughout his long career.
Those who may face homicidal criminals need to be familiar with the physio-psychological aspects of violent encounters. In every one of his shootings, Rippy experienced tachypsychia, the sense of things happening in slow motion. The word translates to “the speed of the mind.” As our brain goes into a hyper-speed survival mode, processing input much faster than usual, it creates that sense of slow motion. Says Rippy, “I always felt things slow down. I felt anxiety going into the call; then, in all three of them, it was like slow-motion movies. In all of them, though, it was a matter of two to four seconds.” Having been trained that this might happen, Instructor Rippy was not distracted when it did, and he stayed focused on what he needed to do to solve the lethal problems he was facing.
“You can’t read enough; you can’t train enough. Don’t take it for granted that you’re going to go home,” Rippy wants you to know. “If you don’t educate yourself on current trends, you’re making a mistake.”
Gather as much intelligence as possible beforehand about the situation you may be entering. Says Rippy, “After the Williams incident, in particular, I kicked myself for not having found the time to read the BOLOs. It would have given me warning that we might be going up against a multiple murderer, not just a burglary suspect.”
Train for worst-case shooting problems. Note that when he stood in place and delivered fire, Rippy had a high hit ratio and quickly stopped the fights, but when he had to run while shooting at a running man, he missed. It’s harder to hit a moving target than a standing one. It’s harder to hit a standing target when you are moving than when you are standing still. When you and the target are both moving, as in the Williams shooting, the marksmanship element becomes exponentially more difficult, even for expert shooters like Rippy.
Prepare for post-traumatic issues. Post-event symptoms such as insomnia due to adrenaline dump are virtually universal. Remember so-called “post-shooting trauma” is less a reaction to your having to shoot a criminal than it is your reaction to how your world has treated you for doing it. Rippy told me, “After the first one, I had insomnia bad. A lot of that was the anxiety of not knowing what the department was going to do. It’s not normal if you don’t replay it in your head. It helps train you for a future situation. Taking a life is not exactly a normal thing.”
Consideration must be given to the person who was forced to shoot. The failure of not one but two psychologists to tell the involved officer why he “flunked the psych test” is almost unforgivable. Such evaluations must be objective, not subjective; those doing the evaluations must be cross-trained by such organizations as the Force Science Institute to understand the unique ramifications of having been forced to kill in defense of self and other innocent parties.
Consider legal aftermaths. Rippy’s last two shootings were so obviously justifiable neither criminal nor civil liability evolved. In the first shooting, the estate of the deceased sued the department, resulting in a “chump change settlement” of $35,000, but at least the City of Eustis explained to Rippy they settled because it was cheaper than going to trial and winning. This was cold comfort to the involved officer, who understandably thought the settlement was a slap in his face.
And one more often-overlooked consideration. When Rick Rippy retired, he had severe hearing loss. While some might associate this with a lifetime of being a firearms instructor, Rick feels at least part of it was having had to fire a gun repeatedly in close quarters without hearing protection in the line of duty. He notes, “They give us all kinds of documented physical evaluations when we come on ‘The Job,’ but not usually a hearing test. Thus, the officer has no baseline to show how much hearing he or she lost in the line of duty.”
Let us close by thanking retired Lieutenant Richard Rippy for his many years of service and for the insights he has shared with American Handgunner’s readers.
I know this is hard to believe, but I wasn’t necessarily the most popular kid in High School. I ran track briefly just to check the block for military pursuits that were to come later, but a jock I was definitely not. I was kind of a cerebral kid who got along with everybody. However, there was never any real threat that I might win Most Handsome or be nominated to escort the Homecoming Queen.
Throughout it all, I was pretty comfortable in my own skin. School violence back in my day was restricted to two rednecks fighting with their fists over something stupid and soon forgotten. Kids brought guns to school all the time, but we left them locked in the trunks of our cars for hunting and shooting excursions afterward. In the days before the Internet, nobody really thought to take things any further.
At some point between then and now something fundamentally changed. The World Wide Web connected folks with weird proclivities in ways we never might have imagined. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a Florida man named George Frandsen has the largest collection of privately-owned fossilized turds in the world. As of 2016, this 36-year-old owned some 1,277 samples of coprolite or fossilized excrement. He even operates an online Poozeum to show off his crap. You can find it here.
Before the Internet, George Frandsen just would have been some harmless guy with a curiously strange hobby. Now this deep into the Information Age, however, Mr. Frandsen can connect with like-minded poo collectors from all over the world. While collecting fossilized turds is, in reality, indeed fairly harmless, the Net takes some other people to much darker places.
Nothing brings out your inner victim like connecting with like-minded lost souls. The dark subject of our discussion today is Scott Beierle. Scott self-identified as an Incel, or part of the Involuntary Celibate community. Distilled to its essence these are most typically hetero males who define themselves as being unable to obtain or maintain a romantic partner despite wishing they could. Theirs is a curious online subculture frequently characterized by self-pity, self-loathing, and a sense of entitlement to sex. Such stuff can also cross a little invisible line to become quite terribly dangerous.
The Guy
Scott Paul Beierle was born in October of 1978. According to his Facebook profile, he was a military veteran, but I couldn’t find many details about his service. After leaving the military he taught Social Studies and English in the Anne Arundel County Public School System. He also served as a substitute teacher at surrounding schools but was oft disciplined for performance problems.
In one case, Beierle was fired from a substitute position for touching a female student on her abdomen and asking if she was ticklish. In 2012 and 2016 he was officially charged with battery for groping women’s buttocks. Over time this disturbed young man came to view all women as the impetus behind his many manifest problems. His online activity reinforced this twisted vision.
Beierle was active on social media. He posted several YouTube videos that allowed him to vent over his sordid state. In one 2014 video, he described himself as an Incel and voiced support and empathy for Elliot Rodger, a mass shooter who also projected his personal shortcomings onto women in general. Rodger ultimately killed seven people and injured another fourteen. This twisted guy posted an online screed just before his attack titled, “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” wherein he verbalized his hatred towards women for rejecting him and sexually active men because he envied them.
Beierle also hated African-Americans and got seriously tooled up over interracial relationships. Illegal immigration set him off as well. He wrote song lyrics that glorified the torture and murder of women. He titled one of his videos, “Dangerous Diversity.”
It Has a Name
The textbook definition of a misogynist is, “A person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.” Not unlike woke or gaslighting, this is one of those obscure terms that no one really paid much attention to until lately. Scott Beierle took it yet further and earned the title “Misogynistic Terrorist” from the ICCT.
ICCT stands for International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. It was founded in 2010 and is based in The Hague. Per Wikipedia, “The ICCT is an independent think tank devoted to providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical support focused on prevention and the rule of law as it relates to combatting terrorism. ICCT’s work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human rights-related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement, and victims’ voices.” I have no idea what all that really means, but the ICCT really doesn’t like people like Scott Beierle.
The Event
November 2, 2018, was a Friday. At 5:37 PM, Scott Beierle walked into Tallahassee Hot Yoga carrying a 9mm Glock 17 handgun. For those of you who, like me, might not get out much, hot yoga is apparently the act of performing yoga in an artificially torrid environment.
Hot yoga began with someone named Bikram Choudhury. The mission is to replicate the heat and humidity of India, where yoga first was born. The goal is to sweat a lot and, in so doing, “prepare the body for movement and remove impurities.” Whatever. That all sounds pretty miserable to me. However, it does reliably attract women.
After dissecting his digital footprint in retrospect, investigators found that Beierle had been planning his attack for months. He briefly masqueraded as a yoga student before opening fire on the folks in the studio. A lot of stuff happened fairly quickly at that point.
Patrons in a bar across the street reported people streaming from the yoga studio. A man in a badly-bloodied white t-shirt then ran into the bar and claimed that he had attacked the shooter in an effort to buy time for the other patrons to escape. Other survivors backed up his claim.
Beierle ultimately shot six people, killing two. The dead victims were a 21-year-old student at nearby Florida State University named Maura Binkley and a 61-year-old physician named Nancy Van Vessem. Binkley was due to graduate the following year. Dr. Van Vessum worked as the Medical Director for a health insurance company.
The man who resisted Beierle’s attack fought back with whatever he had handy. At first, this was a vacuum cleaner and later a broomstick. Though he wasn’t shot, Beierle did beat him severely with his handgun. Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo later applauded the students who, “fought back and tried not only to save themselves but other people.”
The Aftermath
The cops arrived onsite three and one-half minutes after the first shot was fired, which is frankly pretty amazing. However, by then it was all over. Binkley and Van Vessum were already dead, and the loser Beierle had taken his own life.
There were subsequently tributes aplenty to the innocent victims of this egregious rampage. The following day an instructor at Tallahassee Hot Yoga led a yoga class specifically intended to heal the community in the middle of a nearby street. The following year, Maura Binkley’s parents sued Tallahassee Hot Yoga and the property owners for failure to provide adequate security measures.
Ruminations
There is always ample blame to go around in horrible situations like this. There are those who will immediately attack the gun, but this example is even more tenuous than is typically the case. This wasn’t an “assault weapon”–whatever that actually is–or some uber-deadly implement of war. It was just a pistol. Even hypothetical magazine capacity restrictions wouldn’t have touched this one. Scott Beierle was just a really horrible person.
The owners of the yoga studio got sued for what exactly? I could post some scary-looking guy with a black rifle at the front door of my business, but I doubt that would do much to enhance my patient flow. Scott Beierle is the reason I carry a gun every time I’m not asleep or in the shower. When seconds count the cops are often only minutes away. Their response was, per usual, absolutely incredible. It is simply that bad stuff like this typically unfolds very quickly.
I would assert that Scott Beierle is not the problem. Scott Beierle is a symptom of the problem. When I was a kid, stuff like this never happened. Now it seems to happen all the time. What exactly changed?
A point of personal privilege–the absence of light is dark. Similarly, the absence of God is godlessness. Our culture has ejected God from our public spaces and embraced a pervasive depressing nihilistic humanism.
If we persist in raising our kids to believe that life doesn’t matter and that sex is the ultimate end-all then we should not be surprised when the Incels of the world become convinced they have nothing to live for and take it out on the rest of us. Jesus is the only thing I have found that reliably displaces the darkness, even such darkness as Scott Beierle.
I have a friend with more testosterone than sense. He and a college buddy found themselves on the Mexican border during Spring Break several years ago with some spending money and a little time. They were young, bulletproof, and immortal, so they figured they’d wander over and spend the day exploring Juarez on foot.
These two pale gringos were having a simply grand time taking in the sights. However, in short order, they got lost. These were the days before ubiquitous GPS-equipped cell phones, so they really were on their own. Soon they found themselves in a bad neighborhood with the locals looking at them all hungry-like.
Just when things seemed bleakest these two stupid American college kids happened upon a pair of uniformed Mexican police officers and innocently attempted to ask directions. In response, the two Mexican cops drew their weapons and robbed the young men of all their accumulated possessions.
You didn’t need a passport to travel to Mexico back then, so they did eventually get back over the border. However, they lost their wallets, watches, and everything else of value they had on their persons. This was their rude introduction to the realities of police corruption in a Third-World country.
Relativity
It is in vogue to denigrate and even assault the police in America these days. Quite a few politicians have built successful careers around the practice. However, we have no idea what truly bad police really look like. In America, if you get in trouble with precious few exceptions you can call 911 and some selfless guardian with a gun will show up to help you out. The rare exceptions get all the press, but when the zombies start staggering up the cul-de-sac even the most ardent police-bashing anarchist will eventually pick up the phone.
Today’s sordid episode gives us a glimpse into the dark realities of life in the favelas, the sprawling lawless slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In these strange spaces, drug cartel foot soldiers openly packing automatic weapons patrol the streets around police stations. The militarized police force conducts massive armed operations, but shadow organizations of current and former cops engage in extra-judicial killings at the behest of powerful figures both inside and outside of government. It is suspected that this corruption infects the Brazilian government at all levels.
The Target
Marielle Franco was born in the summer of 1979 in Mare, a slum area in Northern Rio de Janeiro. She began working to help support her family at age eleven. She had a daughter at age 19 and raised the child as a single mother. Franco was openly bisexual and lived with her partner Monica Benicio from 2017 until her death.
Franco held a Master’s degree in public administration and was an avowed socialist. Her resume included qualifications as a sociologist, feminist, and human rights activist. In 2016 she won a seat on the Rio de Janeiro city council. She used her political pulpit to speak out vociferously against police corruption. This made her some very dangerous enemies.
The Setting
Crime in urbanized Brazil is so extensive as to be difficult for the civilized mind to comprehend. Many to most of the refugees flowing toward our southern border are fleeing such sordid stuff as this. In the face of well-funded and ruthless gangs driven by drugs, murder, and rampant unfettered lawlessness, many police organizations exceed their official mandate. It’s like a bad movie.
Even if they originally meant well, absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the favelas of Rio, that means shadowy milicias comprised of trained law enforcement officers who undertake extrajudicial killings without due process. While many times this means dead bad guys, it also results in substantial collateral damage as well. In darker spaces, it also means that political activists are targeted for termination based upon their cultural and social influence.
The Hit
On March 13, 2018, Marielle Franco posted this to Twitter, “Another homicide of a young man that could be credited to the police. Matheus Melo was leaving church when he was killed. How many others will have to die for this war to end?”
The following day Franco and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes were returning home from a round table discussion titled, “Young Black Women Moving (Power) Structures.” This event promoted the empowerment of black women in impoverished Brazil. Ms. Franco’s press officer was also in the back seat. From out of the traffic a Chevy Cobalt pulled stealthily up alongside.
The passenger in the Cobalt then produced an HK MP5 submachine gun and fired a total of nine rounds in controlled bursts. Four bullets hit Franco—three in the head and one in the neck. She died on the scene. Her driver was struck by three rounds and was also killed. Her press secretary was injured but survived.
Details
Movies would have us believe that highly-trained hitmen accepting contracts from anonymous clients online have raised assassination for money to an art form. Reality is typically far removed from this stylized image. In many places, criminals will kill in exchange for drugs or even the right to pilfer the pockets of the deceased. In the case of Marielle Franco, however, this job truly was professionally executed.
The kill zone was a city street amply covered with surveillance cameras. However, somebody with the skill and access to do so had deactivated the cameras covering the area at the precise moment of the hit. The cartridge cases recovered at the scene were traced to a shipment sent to Brasilia’s federal police force in 2006. Police officials initially alleged that the shipment had been stolen from a local post office though they later retracted this claim.
The HK MP5 submachine gun incorporates a fluted chamber to smooth extraction and enhance reliability. As a result, fired cases from an MP5, or any roller-locked HK firearms for that matter, demonstrate distinctive longitudinal lines. No other military weapon in common use marks its empties in this manner. This identified the murder gun as a fairly rarefied piece of iron.
The Weapon
The HK MP5 traces its roots all the way back to the Second World War and the German MG42 belt-fed machinegun. The previous MG34 had revolutionized Infantry combat. For the first time maneuver elements were afforded truly man-portable, rifle-caliber, belt-fed firepower mobile enough to keep pace during an Infantry assault. However, the MG34 was meticulously machined with tight tolerances. This made the gun heavy, expensive, and finicky.
The MG42, by contrast, was formed predominantly out of stamped steel pressings that could be churned out cheaply by semi-skilled workers. The beating heart of the MG42 was its roller-locked, delayed-blowback action. This system utilized a pair of roller bearings that cammed into recesses milled into the breech face. The end result was cheap, rugged, and reliable.
In the closing days of WW2, the Germans adapted this system to drive a prototype assault rifle. The StG 45 was an evolutionary development of the StG 44 and used the roller-locked system to fire the 7.92x33mm Kurz intermediate cartridge. Allied forces overran the arms factories where these guns were being developed, but the design was subsequently taken to Spain.
This effort resulted in the Spanish CETME rifle that eventually morphed into the German HK G3. This same action was rechambered for the 5.56mm, the 7.62x39mm, and, in 1964, the 9mm pistol cartridge. This pistol caliber SMG was originally designated the HK54. It eventually became known as the MP5.
The MP5 was first issued to German border police in 1966. It has since been produced under license around the world in more than 100 different variations and remains in series production today. Though its 800 rpm rate of fire is a bit spunky for my tastes, the MP5 remains one of the smoothest submachineguns ever produced. The takedown of the Iranian embassy in London on May 5, 1980, by the British SAS wielding HK MP5 SMGs on international television, sold untold thousands of the guns to military and LE users around the globe.
The Aftermath
Brazilian police investigated Ronald Paulo Alves Pereira and Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega in connection with the killings. Both men had been honored by Jair Bolsonaro, the current President of Brazil, for their police service in the early 2000s. Nóbrega purportedly headed one of these extrajudicial paramilitary groups active in Brazil called “The Crime Bureau.” He was shot to death after supposedly firing upon police who came to arrest him in northeastern Bahia state. Whatever secrets he held went with him to the grave.
Brazilian police also arrested Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Vieira de Queiroz roughly a year after the shooting. Lessa was purportedly the triggerman, while de Queiroz was alleged to have driven the Cobalt. Both men were former members of the military police. One was also a previous neighbor of current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in a gated luxury apartment complex in Rio. Both Lessa and de Queiroz denied involvement.
I read quite a lot about this sordid situation pulling this article together and still don’t even begin to understand it. Allegations of corruption run all the way up to the Presidency. Various players served together in either the military or elite Law Enforcement units and seem connected in ways that are impossible to untangle. However, the take-home point is that today’s American institutional Law Enforcement challenges pale in the face of true corruption.
Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday had a date with destiny October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona.
Attempting to disarm local cowboys at the O.K. Corral, the ensuing gunfight on Fremont Street gained legendary status in Old West lore.
Here, our combative pistolcraft expert breaks down how events played out when the bullets began to fly.
Welcome to Tombstone. Interestingly, this sign appears to be misdated. The accepted date for the O.K. Corral gunfight is Oct. 26, 1881. (Library of Congress photo, c. 1937)
Martha King was shopping in the butcher shop on Fremont Street. She looked out the store window and saw four armed men walking west. She knew the Earps by sight, but not their names and she didn’t recognize Doc Holliday. According to her later testimony, King said they walked four abreast in a “stately” manner with Doc on the inside closest to the store, Virgil and Wyatt in the middle, and Morgan was on the opposite side.
Wyatt and Virgil were slightly ahead. King said the wind whipped open Doc’s long coat and she saw he was trying to conceal “a gun, not a pistol,” underneath it. She went on to say one of the Earps, probably Morgan, said, “Let them have it,” and the man she later learned was Doc Holliday replied, “All right.” This still does not mean the Earps had homicide on their minds. It could have just been a statement of bravado by Morgan Earp, the one member of the group who had never been tested in armed conflict.
Looking east on Fremont, Behan saw the Earps and Doc walking his way. He said later that Morgan and Wyatt had pistols in their hands. The sheriff told the cowboys to wait while he went to talk with the police chief and his men. The Earps and Holliday met him on the sidewalk in front of the butcher shop. Looking past Behan, they could see the cowboys at the edge of the empty lot. It makes sense that Holliday may have been concerned to see them standing, literally, right next to where he was living with “Big Nose” Kate.
Behan wanted to appear in control so he said loudly, “Gentlemen, I am sheriff of this county, and I am not going to allow any trouble if I can help it.” However, the Earps had made up their mind and pushed past him. Behan, not to be deterred, followed down the sidewalk. According to Virgil and Wyatt’s later testimony, Behan called to them, “if they [the Earps] kept going, they might be murdered,” but it didn’t stop them. The Earps and Holliday were now only 100 feet from the vacant lot on Fremont Street.
Virgil, not wanting to totally dismiss the County Sheriff with so many watching, yelled over his shoulder, “We’re going to disarm them!” According to Behan’s later testimony, he told Virgil he was in the process of disarming the cowboys. In his mind, Behan’s request was to leave it for him to finish. However, both Virgil and Wyatt testified Behan told them he had already disarmed the cowboys. I tend to believe what the Earps claim here.
First, Johnny Behan was in this to raise his own profile. Second, witnesses claim the Earps seemed to relax at this point as they continued their walk. Virgil moved the revolver in his belt from an appendix position around to his left hip where it would be more concealed. He also switched Doc’s cane from his left hand to his right, his shooting hand, to appear less threatening. Both were serious mistakes.
Wyatt tucked his revolver into the canvas pocket of his new coat. For a moment, it seemed the chance of a gunfight was diminished. The Earps and Doc Holliday likely felt a small sense of relief, but public appearance was just as important to the Earps as it was to Behan and the cowboys. They couldn’t just walk away after making such an approach down to Fremont Street. They surely felt obliged to finish what they started and make sure the cowboys were disarmed.
The Earps and Doc Holliday moved to the edge of the vacant lot. They were probably surprised to see Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury wore gun belts and revolvers. There were also two horses just inside the lot with rifles hanging from their saddles. In their minds, it seemed Johnny Behan had lied and the cowboys still needed disarming in a very public way.
The cowboys watched the Earps and Doc push past Johnny Behan and continue their approach. Billy Claiborne and Billy Clanton stood deepest in the lot, probably a distance of 18 to 20 feet. Ike was only a few feet inside the lot, just off the board sidewalk while the McLaury brothers, holding the two horses, were practically on the sidewalk, just off the edge, with Tom marginally closer to Fremont Street than Frank. Tom had apparently taken Billy Clanton’s horse then walked into the narrow lot to talk with Billy Claiborne.
I believe the cowboys had no plan for what was about to happen. They had to have looked around and noticed the lot was a terrible place for a gunfight. There was no room to move or even retreat. I’m sure at this point, they were feeling a high level of duress. After all, there were so many people watching!
One thing we know for sure is Johnny Behan was no gunfighter. If there was to be a confrontation, the sheriff wanted nothing to do with it. According to witnesses, as the Earps and Holliday reached the northeast corner of the lot next to Fly’s, Behan ran in and pushed Billy Claiborne toward the landing that separated Fly’s boarding house from the photography studio.
This split in the building is present in the tourist attraction today. People watched with nervous anticipation. Angles into the lot made it very difficult for most to see in, especially since they were also trying to stay out of the line of fire. In addition, their view was likely blocked by the Earps, Doc Holliday, Frank and Tom McLaury and their horses.
Take note here, as most historians agree on what I have described so far, with some minor variations. However, what follows is controversial in some circles, and has been debated by those in the know for well over a century. There are defined factions who believe the Earps and those who side with the cowboys. I personally do not believe Wyatt Earp was a hero or a villain. I think he was just a man of his time trying to get ahead, attempting to gain a level of respect beyond his current station in life. What I do believe, and greatly respect, is he was one cool and controlled individual when the bullets flew!
So, while there are likely to be those who disagree, at this point I am going to relate the ensuing events as I believed they took place based on my extensive reading, interviews, visits to the site, and my lifelong study of armed conflict. Through my research and experience, I have tried to place myself into the minds of the participants.
First off, the mannequins that are in place inside the O.K. Corral tourist attraction I believe are wrong. If nothing else, they leave no room for the horses who were present. In fact, the attraction leaves the horses out, altogether. The reproduction is based on a diagram Wyatt Earp drew decades after that fateful day, and I believe he either did not remember correctly or was telling the story as he wanted it remembered. It conflicts with others who watched the event unfold. In reality, I believe most of the fight took place where the wall now sits that blocks the attraction from Fremont Street.
Virgil stepped forward into the lot, just a few feet from the west wall of Fly’s. He was in charge of this action and wanted to be both seen and heard. I doubt he went far off the board sidewalk, understanding the lot was a “kill box.” He likely stayed as close to the wall and sidewalk as possible. He still had Doc’s cane in his right hand and the thought of his gun being so distant probably weighed on his mind. Wyatt, on Virgil’s right, placed himself at the northwest corner of Fly’s boarding house.
I have no doubt he understood the importance of both being able to move and place something between him and incoming fire. He probably wanted to stay close to Virgil as well. Morgan stopped a few feet out on Fremont Street just off the sidewalk while Doc was further out in the middle of street. He placed himself in a position to see the back of the lot as well as both directions on Fremont.
Tom McLaury moved closer to the horse he held and the rifle in its scabbard. Seeing this, Doc removed the shotgun from under his coat so Tom would see it. I doubt anyone spoke, dead quiet as everyone assessed the situation. In truth, there wasn’t much left to say. With so many people watching and reputations at risk, the “line in the sand” had been crossed. Virgil commanded, “Throw up your hands, boys. I intend to disarm you.” Frank McLaury responded, “We will,” though some witnesses felt as if he intended to add the word “not!” as a face-saving gesture. Regardless, as Frank uttered those first couple of words the cowboys began to move.
They had to feel trapped in the narrow lot with walls on two sides. Citizens, likely friends of the cowboys, would later testify that Frank and Billy started to raise their hands while Tom pulled open his coat to show he wasn’t armed. A lot to see considering the angles involved. The Earps would claim they heard the sound of revolvers being cocked. Frank McLaury and Wyatt Earp both started their draw. Billy Clanton at the rear of the lot, his view of Frank blocked by a horse, could only see Wyatt reaching into his coat pocket. No doubt he thought the fight was starting. The draw and shoot sequence for Frank, Billy and Wyatt all began together, with each cocking their revolvers as they drew.
Wyatt’s gun came out fast and smooth due to the specially lined pocket of his new coat. It didn’t snag on the canvas pocket making his preparation worth the effort. Today, those of us who carry guns for serious purposes sit on the porch, in a restaurant or at the range and discuss ways to improve our performance through training, preparation and gear. I have no doubt men like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Luke Short, Wild Bill and Doc Holliday had similar conversations in their time, talking about ways to prepare and get the upper hand on their adversaries. I can’t help but wonder if the pocket on Wyatt’s coat came out of one of these discussions.
Billy and Frank were known to be good shots, but this type of careful marksmanship isn’t the same as drawing rapidly and getting the gun between you and the threat while someone was trying to snuff out your life! Consider how the cowboys had to reach down, draw and cock their guns, position them, aim (if they took the time to do so) and fire while Wyatt cocked and extracted his pistol from his pocket. Think about having to shift your shooting grip to thumb cock your revolver for each shot in the middle of a gunfight for your life. We certainly take our semiautomatics for granted these days. Without a doubt, keeping your cool and not panicking — being deliberate — was the key, the same then as today.
Wyatt would have considered Frank McLaury his immediate threat. He had heard he was “a good man with a gun” and chose to ignore Billy Clanton. Talk about ice water in your veins! At the same time, Virgil waved the cane and shouted, “Hold! I don’t mean that,” but it was too late. The fight had started. Wyatt drew, aimed and fired at Frank McLaury, hitting him solidly in the abdomen just to the left of his navel (Hit #1). It was the perfect example of keeping your head under fire and placing your shot where it needed to go. Deliberation! Gut shooting was considered the preferred target zone at the time. The thought was the infection would kill the person at some point which turned out to be wrong thinking. Today we look for rapid incapacitation which means rounds must be delivered to the head or high chest region where the majority of vital organs are located.
Frank twisted from the impact of Wyatt’s round. Billy Clanton fired at Wyatt almost simultaneously but missed. Did he aim or just fire in panic? We will never know. The truth is, the sights on the single-action revolver of the day were not that substantial, making rapid visual access problematic. Revolvers of the time were also dark in color making finding the sights even harder. What about a cloud of black powder smoke around the muzzle? Did that hinder aiming? This is the reason Bat Masterson asked for taller and wider front sights on his custom-built, nickel-plated Colt Peacemakers.
Today the gun community argues sights versus point shooting and iron sights versus optics. I doubt these debates will end anytime soon. What I will say based on my many years of study into gunfighting is sights are a good thing and if we can utilize them, it is worth the effort. Sights that are colored are easier to see than sights that are black, and sights that glow are easier to see than sights that do not.
Witnesses said there was a split-second pause. I believe the finality of what was happening hit the combatants in the lot and on the street. People were going to die in the next few seconds and everyone knew it. Virgil had no option but to fight, but his hand was full of walking stick instead of gun. He switched Doc’s cane to his left hand. Why he just didn’t drop it is a mystery, but we see the same reaction today as folks hang on to bags of groceries, car keys, cell phones or other useless items when a fight breaks out. Regardless, he then reached across his body for the revolver tucked into the left-rear side of his waistband. The greater distance travelled, the longer the draw will take, no way around this. As he did so, Frank McLaury, seriously wounded but still in the fight (so much for the .45 as an instant man stopper), raised his gun and shot Virgil in the right calf (Hit #2). Frank was likely bent at the waist, so the low shot makes sense. Tombstone’s top law officer went down.
Ike Clanton’s big mouth had partially brought about this violent event, but now that he had the opportunity to act, he was an “empty suit.” He did not have the guns or guts to fight. As Virgil went down, Billy Clanton probably intended to shoot at Wyatt but Ike Clanton got in the way, begging for his life. Wyatt once again displayed his iron will, having the presence of mind to see Ike was not armed. He had to wrestle with Ike yelling “The fight has commenced, get to fighting or get away!”
Much has been made about Wyatt Earp being the only person unharmed in the fight. I don’t think there is much of a mystery here, Wyatt had Ike as cover for a sizable portion of the fight. Billy likely hesitated, not wanting to shoot Ike. Morgan took this opportunity to shoot Billy, hitting him in the torso, pushing him back against the wall of the structure on the west side of the lot (Hit #3). However, Billy managed to keep shooting much like we see in armed conflict today. Just because someone is shot does not mean they are going to instantly stop. As we know, a human filled with epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol — the fight or flight cocktail — can do amazing things. Billy Clanton was probably in this state.
One of Billy’s rounds likely tore a hole through Wyatt’s coat as he continued to fight. Virgil struggled to his feet and aimed at Frank, who tried to escape from the narrow lot to the greater space of the street. Frank’s horse turned out to be cover from Virgil. Wyatt still wrestled with Ike. As Clanton grabbed Wyatt’s right/gun hand his cocked revolver discharged. At this same moment Morgan yelled “I am hit” (Hit #4). Morgan Earp fell having been struck by a bullet that passed through one shoulder blade and exited the other. While it is possible that round could have come from multiple sources — he could have been hit by one of Billy Clanton’s bullets —the angle is such that he could have also been struck by the round inadvertently fired from Wyatt’s revolver, something that still happens today in the “fog” of a gunfight. We will never know for sure.
Morgan tried to get back to his feet but fell again. Before the shooting began, Doc Holliday played sentry in the middle of Fremont Street, holding the shotgun ready for all to see while staying alert for any threats from onlookers. Once the shooting started, Doc, in a very admirable display of self-control, resisted the desire to start shooting. He decided to leave Frank McLaury and the Clantons to the Earps and waited to engage Tom McLaury. The horse Tom held stayed between him and Doc which shielded him. Tom may not have had a revolver, but he was certainly trying to recover the rifle from the saddle scabbard, I know I would have been! Wyatt, finally clear of Ike and able to take a look at what was happening. In another stellar display of his ability to keep his head in combat, Wyatt shot Tom McLaury’s horse to get it out of the way. The animal pulled loose and Tom McLaury was exposed. Doc closed in and fired the shotgun at Tom hitting him under the right armpit (Hit #5). Most certainly a lethal wound, Tom McLaury staggered down Fremont Street and collapsed against a telegraph pole at Third Street. Today, there is a telephone pole in a similar location.
Doc dropped the shotgun, drew his revolver from under his coat, and looked for another threat. He probably saw Frank McLaury stagger onto Fremont Street and not appear to present a threat. Tom McLaury was down and out. Ike Clanton had fled after being thrown clear of Wyatt. At this point, Virgil and Wyatt began to shoot at Billy Clanton, who was sitting against the wall at the other end of the lot. There is no way to know if Doc fired at Billy. The teenager was hit in the abdomen and the right wrist (Hits #6 and #7). Billy sat in the dirt, his back to the frame structure owned by Harwood, and was able to transfer his gun from his right to his left hand and fired again but missed. At this point, Billy was effectively out of the fight gravely injured, leaving only Frank with the ability to continue on, despite being seriously, if not fatally, wounded.
Out on Fremont, Frank attempted to take cover behind his horse, but after he fired a shot at Morgan the animal fled leaving him exposed, crouching and bleeding in the street. Morgan pulled himself up and prepared to shoot based on what Frank did next. But Frank’s attention was on Doc Holliday, who with nickel-plated revolver in hand, circled him in full view of everyone watching. What happened then has been well documented by witnesses. Trying desperately to call on everything he had left in one last act of defiance, Frank McLaury stood straight, raised his revolver, and cried out to Doc, “I’ve got you now.” Holliday replied, “Blaze away! You’re a daisy if you have,” and Frank pulled the trigger on his cocked revolver. The bullet creased Doc’s hip just below his holster and the dentist yelled, “I’m shot right through” (Hit #8). Doc and Morgan fired at the same time with Morgan’s bullet hitting Frank near the right ear (Hit #9) while Doc missed. Frank fell where he stood. Doc walked over and looked down at Frank McLaury saying, “The son of a bitch has shot me and I mean to kill him,” but Morgan already had. The most famous gunfight in history was over.
It has been said time and again the Gunfight on Fremont Street could be described as “30 rounds in 30 seconds.” If this is true, then hits from both sides — nine, total — represent a hit ratio of around 22 to 23 percent, much like law enforcement shootings today. I have often wondered how the smoke from the black powder may have hindered the men fighting, confined, at close distance. Did the area cloud up or did the swirling winds remove it? A few rounds would be no big deal but how about a situation where 30 rounds were fired in an enclosed space?
Wyatt and Doc were later arrested and stayed in jail until the probable cause hearing in front of Judge Wells Spicer concluded. It was determined that he Earps and Holliday had acted within the scope of the law and their sworn duty. Under these same circumstances, I doubt in today’s climate a judge would find for the Earps.
We will never know for sure exactly what happened on October 26, 1881, in that side lot off Fremont Street, but I have had a wonderful time trying to find out. As I close, I must credit all of the authors and historians that I have read, viewed and talked with as I tried to figure out what transpired that day. Bob Boze Bell, Jeff Guinn, James Reasoner, John Boesseneckner, Tom Clavin, Roy Young, Gary L. Roberts, Casey Tefertiller, John Richard Stephens, Andrew Isenberg, Leon Metz, Paula Mitchell Marks, Dr. Paul Hutton and many others I have probably forgotten. As I wrote this, I referenced these folks often. Again, I am not a historian like those listed, but I have tried to get it right.