Category: Cops

If you shape your worldview at the local cineplex, and, distressingly, many do, then you might expect gangs of bank robbers wielding full auto HK G36 assault rifles to be lurking behind every parking meter in whatever little metropolis you call home. However, I have it on reliable information that movies are not technically real. The reality, by contrast, paints a very different picture.

Automatic weapons (not to be confused with “semiautomatic assault weapons,” whatever they actually are) have been heavily regulated in the United States since 1934. Thompson submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles were really the only automatic weapons in circulation back then, and they were used precious few times in actual crimes. However, then as now blood and sex sell newspapers, so the public became convinced that machinegun-related crime was an existential threat to our American way of life.

As a result, legislators did what legislators do. Interestingly, back in 1934 lawmakers actually read the document they were sworn to support and defend. They appreciated that they lacked the constitutional power to ban anything. What they subsequently did was to simply tax machineguns out of existence. As $200 in 1934 is about $3,000 today, levying a $200 tax on the transfer of machineguns effectively shut down commerce in these items.

Now fast forward to the 1980s and $200 was not the lofty sum it once was. Private ownership of automatic weapons, therefore, began to accumulate a proper following. In 1986 a Democratically-controlled congress slipped the Hughes Amendment into the ironically-titled Firearms Owners Protection Act. President Reagan daftly signed the thing, and the new production of automatic weapons for sale to civilians was gone never to return. Resulting market forces pushed prices of transferable automatic weapons into the stratosphere. The M16 I bought for $600 in 1987 would cost twenty grand to replace today.

As of 2016, the BATF reported that there were 175,977 transferable automatic weapons in the National Firearms Registry and Transfer Record. A few of these guns are still in Law Enforcement arms rooms or museums, but most of them are owned by folks like us. Since 1934 there have been two cases wherein the legal owner of a registered machinegun committed a crime with his weapon. Only one is well documented.

The Shooter

In 1988 Roger Waller was a thirteen-year veteran of the Dayton, Ohio, police department. He also owned a gun shop and was active in paintball. His Law Enforcement job was to manage the Drug Hotline Volunteer Program. His duties included training and scheduling volunteers to man a telephone hotline wherein local citizens could call in tips about suspected drug dealers. Officer Waller would correlate the information and occasionally travel to the locations reported to observe for evidence of trafficking.

If Officer Waller saw something suspicious his mandate was to report it for further investigation. Waller was not to speak with anyone at these locations or attempt to buy drugs. Though he carried a 9mm handgun, Officer Waller’s duties were administrative in nature.

Wow, Just Wow

On September 15^th 1988, Officer Waller was spending his day off having a new furnace installed by an HVAC specialist named Dennis Michael. Waller told Michael that he was a police officer who investigated drug dealers. Michael informed Waller that there was a house in his neighborhood that he suspected of harboring drug activity. Once the furnace was installed Waller and Michael drove to Michael’s neighborhood for a look-see.

Despite being off duty, Waller carried his 9mm service pistol and badge along with his legally registered .380ACP MAC-11 submachine gun in a shoulder holster. His new buddy the furnace installer also brought along a shotgun. Once Michael identified the dwelling the two men kept it under surveillance for about half an hour. Observing nothing out of the ordinary Officer Waller announced that he had “decided to go down and try to make a buy at the door.”

As he approached the home a young girl emerged. Waller flashed his badge and advised her to leave as he “was going to bust this house.” Waller then walked to the screen door and addressed the two men inside.

Lawrence Eugene Hileman and Jerry L. Smith were inside the home. When Officer Waller announced that he was there to buy crack cocaine Hileman and Smith laughed. They then invited Waller and Michael inside stating that they didn’t sell crack cocaine. Waller and Michael entered the house and Waller identified himself as “drug enforcement.” Officer Waller then announced, “You know, somebody is going to go to jail here if we don’t find out where the drugs are.”

The details are fuzzy, but at this point apparently something bad happened. Officer Waller shot Hileman in the chest with a long burst from his submachine gun. Waller later claimed it was an accident, but I read that the guy was hit thirty times. Dennis Michael, the furnace repairman, then shot Jerry Smith twice with his shotgun. Hileman died in short order. Smith was grievously wounded.

The Gun

Gordon Ingram was born in California in 1924. A World War 2 veteran, he returned home from the war and began the design of his first submachine gun.

The result, the Ingram Model 6, was a .45ACP weapon built around a tubular receiver. The Model 6 was designed as an inexpensive replacement for the Thompson that was both heavy and spendy to produce. The Model 6 was available with either a horizontal or vertical foregrip and included a novel fire selector in the trigger, not unlike that of the Steyr AUG. A short pull produced semiauto fire, while a long pull produced full auto. Alas, in 1949 the world was awash in submachine guns, so after a run of 20,000 copies, the Model 6 died a natural death.

In 1964 Ingram designed his masterpiece. The M10 submachine gun was available in either 9mm or .45ACP chamberings and was produced predominantly via steel stampings. These guns were less than a foot long with their flimsy wire stocks retracted and weighed 6.26 pounds. However, the M10’s diminutive dimensions produced an abbreviated bolt travel and subsequent breathtaking rate of fire in excess of 1,000 rpm.

In 1969 Ingram joined SIONICS, an American arms-producing company founded by the flamboyant former OSS/CIA officer Mitch Werbell III.

SIONICS stood for “Studies in the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter-Subversion.” This has got to be the coolest acronym ever contrived by man.

Ingram joined his tiny subgun to a novel two-stage sound suppressor designed by WerBell and proceeded to try to sell the combination to everybody in the free world.

In 1972 Ingram and WerBell, now under the mantle of the Military Armaments Corporation (MAC, the second coolest acronym in human history) released the M11. This was a scaled-down version of the M10 chambered in .380ACP. The M11 was not much larger than a 1911 pistol and weighed a paltry 3.5 pounds. This spunky little bullet hose cycled at between 1,200 and 1,600 rpm and fed from either 16 or 32-round magazines. This was the weapon Officer Waller used to kill the unfortunate Mr. Hileman. Though both guns are frequently referred to as either the MAC-10 or MAC-11, this designation was never formally endorsed by the company.

How Do They Run?

The M10 weighs almost as much as an M16A1, but it is undeniably compact. With a sound suppressor installed and the stock extended I can keep my bursts from a 9mm M10 inside a paper plate at fifteen meters. Without the can and with the stock collapsed the gun looks undeniably cool but becomes an area weapon system.

The M11 is more controllable, though trigger discipline becomes an even greater issue given the profligate rate of fire. You can actually hold a tuned M11 sideways at head height, squeeze the trigger, and empty the gun before the first case hits the ground. That’s a dandy parlor trick but doesn’t have much practical application. Great care must be exercised with both guns in the absence of a sound suppressor to avoid the errant inadvertent defingering.

The Rest of the Story

Ingram and WerBell wanted desperately to convince Uncle Sam to replace all of his 1911 pistols with MAC submachine guns. The mind boggles at the number of shot-off digits that might litter military firing ranges today had they been successful. As it was they did sell a smattering around the globe at about $120 apiece back in the seventies but eventually gave up and quit. Semiauto variants of Ingram’s guns are still in production today.

Officer Waller and his furnace-installing civilian deputy Dennis Michael both pled guilty and were sentenced to eighteen years in prison. The deceased Mr. Hileman had served as a past police drug informant and was indeed apparently a pretty vile guy. There were even rumors that Waller had killed him intentionally, perhaps as a contract hit. The details are lost to time.

Prior to 1986, anybody with $200 and a Dremel tool could file a BATF Form 1 and legally build a machinegun in their basement. 175,977 machineguns ended up in private hands under this system. With the exception of Officer Waller and one other guy, in 86 years nobody criminally misused any of those weapons.

About the author: Will Dabbs A native of the Mississippi Delta, Will is a mechanical engineer who flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D, and AH1S aircraft as an Army Aviator. He has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning and summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.

Major Dabbs eventually resigned his commission in favor of medical school where he delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Will works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business build-ing precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. He is married to his high school sweetheart, has three awesome adult children, and teaches Sunday School. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal, and the movie “Aliens.”

On January 12, 1983, on a cluttered street in Memphis, Tennessee, an off-duty police officer happened upon a purse snatching. Unable to apprehend the criminal, the officer did, however, recognize the suspect. The cop subsequently drove to the man’s home in the company of two other patrolmen. Finding the house empty the officers actually contacted the suspect but were unable to understand him on the phone. They subsequently gave up, filed a report, and called it a day.

At the time the suspect in the purse snatching was at another house in North Memphis along with thirteen other African American males. These men had spent the day smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. They were all members of a nameless religious cult led by a 49-year-old mental patient named Lindberg Sanders.

Lindbergh Sanders described himself as “Black Jesus,” and his was an odd theology indeed. His Rastafarian rites forbade his acolytes from eating pork, drinking water, or wearing hats. He had informed his followers that the world would end on January 10^th, two days prior. When he was proved wrong he found himself in a foul mood.

Amongst a bewildering array of nonsensical practices, Sanders also vehemently denigrated the police as tools of Satan. The relatively benign purse snatching query from police catalyzed Sanders’ toxic milieu. The subsequent conflagration was an epic bloodbath.

Sanders had the original suspect anonymously call the police to his North Memphis house ostensibly to discuss the purse snatching. 34-year-old Vietnam veteran Patrolman Bobby Hester and his partner Ray Schwill answered the call. Once they entered the house the two white police officers realized they were both surrounded and outnumbered.

Hester radioed for backup, and the two officers attempted to extricate themselves. The cultists gained control of Officer Schwill’s gun and shot him in the face with it. Schwill nonetheless made it to the door and safety. Patrolman Hester was taken captive. Several members of the cult fled the house and were eventually apprehended.

The first responding officer immediately attempted to enter the home only to be thrown bodily off the porch. The second went in shooting, exiting the house to reload several times. Despite his efforts, they were nonetheless unable to reach Patrolman Hester.

Memphis Police quickly surrounded the house and began negotiations with Sanders. Sanders and his followers had Officer Hester’s radio and used it to communicate with authorities. Sanders announced his intent to murder Officer Hester live over a Memphis radio station. He stated that he held a gun to the patrolman’s head and that any effort to approach the house would end in the lawman’s death. Neighbors and the escaped cult members all claimed the suspects were heavily armed.

What happened next is disputed. Sanders activated the radio as his followers beat and tortured Patrolman Hester. Hester’s pleas could be heard clearly by officers outside the dwelling. His comrades pressed for permission to attempt a rescue. Concerned about Sanders’ earlier threat and still holding out hope for a peaceful solution, administrators dragged out their discourse with Sanders for some thirty hours. This fateful decision has been second-guessed countless times since.

At 0300 on January 13^th everything went quiet. Sanders refused to communicate, and Hester could no longer be heard. Microphones pointed at the house detected, “My daddy is dead. My brother is dead. The devil is dead.”  Police administrators finally gave the go-ahead for a dynamic entry.

The Assault

The six-man Memphis TACT team deployed tear gas and flash-bang grenades before storming the house. They carried M16A1 rifles and 12-gauge shotguns. The entire operation took some twenty minutes. The tactical team was met with gunfire in the first room they entered. Patrolman Hester’s body had been placed near the front door in a vain effort at slowing their progress.

In the ensuing firefight, the tactical team fired a total of eighty rounds. Sanders and his remaining followers were killed to a man, all but one shot in the head. The suspects fired a total of twelve rounds from the two .38 revolvers taken from Hester and Schwill. These were the only two firearms recovered at the scene. Crime scene diagrams and photographs depicted the dead cult members lined up on the floor in a bedroom.

The tactical team found Hester handcuffed to a chair and beaten to death. He had been viciously tortured with a variety of implements. At the time of the assault, Hester had been dead between twelve and twenty-four hours.

The Weapons

The tactical team carried selective-fire M16A1 rifles and short-barreled Remington 870 pump-action shotguns. I was seventeen years old and living about an hour south of Memphis at the time of this tragedy. I recall seeing news reports of the event.

As the combat inside the house would inevitably be close range, dark, and pitiless, news reports showed that the SWAT officers had secured powerful D-cell police flashlights to the triangular forends of their weapons with tape. Observers outside the house reported hearing automatic weapons fire during the assault.

The M16A1 is a lightweight and maneuverable assault rifle well suited for combat in close quarters. Nowadays everybody mounts tactical lights on the forends of their weapons. In 1983, however, the use of onboard weapon lights was groundbreaking stuff indeed.

The M16A1 was a product-improved version of the original Stoner-inspired AR15. In 1958 the US military first conducted trials of these small-caliber 5.56mm rifles alongside the heavier .30-caliber M14. Initial reports were overwhelmingly positive.

As a result, in 1963 the first batch of redesignated M16 rifles was shipped to Vietnam for combat trials with South Vietnamese Army units and US Army Special Forces.

Soon thereafter the weapon was updated to include an enclosed birdcage flash suppressor, a forward bolt assist device, and a redesigned buttstock with a rigid sling swivel and storage compartment for a cleaning kit. This improved rifle was designated the M16A1 and soldiered on until replaced by the heavier M16A2 in the 1980s.

The Remington 870 slide action shotgun first saw service in 1950 and has remained in constant production until the present day. More than 11 million copies have been manufactured. The 870 is a bottom-loading, side-ejecting slide-action design that feeds from an under-barrel tubular magazine. Literally countless stock, magazine, and barrel options have made the 870 the most accessorized and customized shotgun ever contrived.

The shotguns used in the Shannon Street assault sported wooden stocks, shortened 12-inch barrels, and accessory ammunition carriers. In competent hands and at close quarters this weapon would offer overwhelming firepower combined with respectable maneuverability.

This operation represented a very early example of the tactical use of onboard weapon lights. The trend has subsequently circled the globe.

The Rest of the Story…

Repercussions from the Shannon Street Massacre, as it has come to be called, resonate even today. The decision to delay the assault in favor of negotiations ultimately sealed Officer Hester’s fate. Nowadays Memphis PD tactical doctrine mandates an assault the moment there is evidence of harm to an officer or citizen.

Lindberg Sanders’ family paints an entirely different picture of the events that led up to the bloody nighttime assault at 2239 Shannon Street. They claim that the initial phone call to the police was intended to clear up a misunderstanding over the purse snatching. They say that things spiraled out of control only after Officer Schwill began goading Lindberg and his followers with a faux black accent, something he was apparently wont to do.

Sanders’ surviving children point out that six of the seven cult members were killed with shots to the head despite possessing only the two captured police weapons among them. This observation combined with the orientation of the bodies at the crime scene led them to claim that the suspects were killed execution-style. The pathology report did state, however, that there were no powder burns on the bodies. This would imply that they were all shot from a modest distance.

Most of the sources I could find referred to the seven dead suspects as victims. Given that they tortured a police officer to death I struggle with that characterization. However, in the final analysis, little of it really matters.

Self-serving politicians, a ghoulish media, and our nation’s affinity for remaining perpetually offended continue to fuel tension between the black community and Law Enforcement. According to those who knew him, Lindberg Sanders hated cops no matter their race, age, or gender. In 1983 eight people lost their lives in the early salvoes of a self-sustaining cycle of hatred and violence that persists today.

By all accounts Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Brown was a good man and a committed cop. A Bay County Sheriff’s Deputy in Bay City, Michigan, Brown spent more than 21 years as a Law Enforcement Officer. Most of that time was invested as a school resource officer at Bay City Western High School and Middle School. In 2012 Brown was named Police Officer of the Year.

On April 23, 2018, Deputy Adam Brown went to jail. Through a series of events that was most unfortunate, he accidentally shot a teacher named Brenda Amthor in the neck with a .380ACP handgun. Though Amthor’s wound was thankfully superficial, she has justifiably struggled with the subsequent trauma of the event. The circumstances that led up to the shooting stand as an object lesson for anybody who spends time around guns.

The Infamous Negligent Discharge

After I left the Army, I returned home to finish my prerequisites for medical school. For two semesters I was a 31-year-old former Army officer amidst hundreds of enthusiastic young college students. While I was back in school that year there was an accident involving our local University Police Department.

The UPD cops carried Glock 17 9mm handguns. They had a professional development class one day on weapons maintenance. I really would have thought that by the time you were packing a gun professionally you would have known all about that. However, one of the female police officers in the second row retrieved her weapon, removed the magazine, and squeezed the trigger to disassemble the pistol without having cleared the gun. The round struck the officer seated ahead of her in the shoulder. He survived, but it was a mess.

There was an understandable furor over this. The UPD chief was interviewed for the school paper and said that essentially accidents sometimes happen and that it wasn’t that big a deal. I had worn the uniform two months before and couldn’t let that go unchallenged. I wrote the paper explaining that a negligent discharge in an operational environment was the unforgivable sin among most serious military units. If you were trusted to carry a weapon among civilians there was an implicit assumption that you would know how to maintain the gun without inadvertently shooting somebody.

Most striker-fired pistol designs like the Glock must have their triggers pulled prior to disassembly. All serious gunmen appreciate this as a potential weak link in the safety chain and check our weapons multiple times before pointing them in a safe direction and squeezing the trigger. Those companies whose weapons do not require a trigger pull for disassembly rightfully trumpet this fact as a safety feature.

The major players in this sad tale eventually got different jobs outside of Law Enforcement, but the teaching point remains. If you’re going to carry a gun then learn absolutely everything there is to know about it and respect the weapon. Personally I would much sooner be helpless in the face of a threat than to cause harm to come to someone I love. That mantra drives my gun handling and my compulsive drive to practice.

The Shooting

School resource officers are a fairly modern thing. The very fact that we feel compelled to post armed Law Enforcement Officers in our schools is just sad. However, these SRO’s perform an undeniably laudable function. In addition to providing an effective layer of practical security, they serve as positive role models and help the kids come to view cops as the good guys. The SRO who failed to intervene during the critical early moments of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was a glaring exception. However, in the case of Adam Brown, all involved attested that he was a pervasive force for good in his school.

The day in question was a Friday. Deputy Brown was in the robotics classroom alone with the robotics teacher. There were no kids present. Brown had brought a couple of his personally-owned handguns to school that day. His plan was to use a machine in the robotics lab to assess the trigger pulls on a 9mm Springfield Armory EMP as well as an unspecified .380ACP SIG SAUER pistol.

Under the robotics teacher’s supervision, Brown tested the trigger on the EMP successfully. They then both left the lab. Brown returned alone later with his SIG and set it up in the machine. However, he had failed to clear the weapon and left a live round in the chamber. When he activated the machine the handgun fired.

The .380ACP round punched through two layers of drywall into the neighboring occupied classroom. Inside were thirty students and Ms. Amthor. The round angled toward the ceiling, scraped a ceiling tile, and hit a cement wall. From there the attenuated bullet zipped across the room and struck Amthor in the neck. Though her wound was subsequently described as a “scratch” that did not require medical attention onsite, the ultimate outcome could have obviously been far worse.

At this point in our tale things are bad but not yet catastrophic. No one had been irrevocably harmed, and the entire ghastly episode was clearly a horrible accident. What Deputy Brown did next, however, took things to a whole new level.

Deputy Brown was summoned and held discussions with school staff regarding the origins of the bullet. They actually gave the spent projectile to Brown for safekeeping. At this point he did not admit to having fired the weapon in question. The school was locked down for obvious reasons. With each passing minute Brown dug himself a deeper hole. By now quite justifiably desperate, Deputy Brown discarded the bullet outside in a grassy space covered with leaves.

A stray bullet transiting an occupied classroom and striking a teacher in the neck is not the sort of thing that is easily swept under the rug. Cops descended upon the school en masse and began combing the school grounds for evidence. A K-9 officer located the spent bullet in the school yard. Those police dogs are a force of nature.

At that point Deputy Brown’s story unraveled. He came clean on the details and submitted himself to the criminal justice system. He subsequently lost his job, paid restitution, and spent 30 days in jail.

The Guns

The Springfield Armory EMP is a concealed carry version of the esteemed 1911 handgun. EMP stands for Enhanced Micro Pistol. The EMP puts the crisp single action trigger and combat-proven controls of the 1911 into a package small and comfortable enough for daily carry. The EMP is designed from the ground up around the 9mm Parabellum cartridge.

I couldn’t find the specific SIG model that was involved in this accident. The SIG 238 is a subcompact single action .380ACP carry gun based upon the basic 1911 action. The P238 feeds from a single-stack 6-round magazine and is small enough to ride in the front pocket of your jeans.

The SIG P230 and P232 are trim .380ACP single action/double action autoloaders made in Germany. Importation of these weapons has been discontinued since 2014. Balance of probability the gun in this instance was actually the single action P238.

The Rest of the Story

The judge in the case was clearly sympathetic. He said in court, “For a guy that has spent his adult life concerned about firearms safety, this was a very adolescent act. But there are more important aspects of this case. There are two reasons I would surmise that police officers are in school. One is the obvious one of security, and the second one is as a role model. It appears for many, many years you were exemplary as a role model. You made a very poor decision to lie about what happened. You attempted to destroy evidence, or to hide it. What you did was a very human decision — one that many of us might make.

“We never know when faced with the decision to do the right thing or the wrong thing what we will do when faced with that pressure. You were under great pressure, you were frightened, you were embarrassed, in fear of losing your job, your reputation, your career. Many of us being human may not have had the courage to do the right thing, but it was the wrong decision. The court needs to take cognizance that it was the wrong decision.

“I feel that because of the circumstances, it’s necessary I impose some incarceration. I need to show the school community that even good people who make mistakes need to be punished.”

There are several timeless messages here. From a basic morality point of view it is always better to just face your failings and deal with the fallout. Trying to lie your way out of a problem never works, unless you’re a politician or a lawyer. In that case it is sort of your job (That’s a joke. All the attorneys in the audience please stop sticking pins into dolls bearing my likeness. To the politicians, well, whatever…I call it like I see it).

As gun guys, we always need to appreciate what an awesome responsibility it is to wander about with the means of taking human life tucked into our belts. I am completely comfortable around firearms and thankfully have never had an accidental discharge in hundreds of thousands of rounds fired. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t. Responsible gun ownership is a higher calling. We should remain ever cognizant of that reality.