Skill with the Safety Equipment
“You are no more armed because you are wearing a pistol than you are a musician because you own a guitar.”
—Colonel Jeff Cooper, Principles of Personal Defense
Continuing with Ayoob’s model, we reach the third survival priority of “Skill with the Safety Equipment,” which encompasses a wide range of individual skills with vehicles, weapons, medical equipment, and other items. However, for the purposes of this analysis, the focus will remain on the officer’s skill at arms.
Interestingly, much of the legend and lore that surrounds the Newhall incident inordinately focuses on this issue. For many law enforcement officers and members of the armed civilian community, their knowledge of Newhall is limited to a few quips or sound bites about the officers’ inability to handle powerful .357 Magnum ammunition they did not train with and the errors made during weapons reloading. These factors are certainly significant and bear further discussion, but they must not be allowed to dominate the conversation about Newhall, lest they drown out the more significant lessons about mindset and tactics. Furthermore, they must be reckoned with the growing body of knowledge about the involuntary physiological changes associated with sympathetic nervous system activation and how these changes negatively affect performance.
It’s worthwhile to remind the reader that this priority is relatively far down Ayoob’s list. Mental awareness and preparedness and proper use of tactics play a more important role in the survival equation than an officer’s ability to shoot, because they make it less likely that the officer will actually need to shoot to solve the problem. Most law enforcement scenarios are resolved without the need for weapons employment, but none of them are exempt from the requirements of mental preparation and the sound execution of good tactics. And when tactics fail, or when the criminal is determined to resist regardless of the superiority of the officer’s tactical advantage, an officer’s skill at arms is the only thing standing between him and certain injury or death.
Training
The state of CHP training at the time of Newhall has been discussed in greater detail previously, but no discussion of individual skills would be complete without recognizing the criticality of proper training to develop these skills.
At the time Officers Gore, Frago, Pence, and Alleyn were cadets, the quality of instruction at the CHP Academy was equal to or better than that provided by most other law enforcement agencies, but the program still had weaknesses and deficiencies. The cadets were unable to fully integrate some of the lessons from their academy training into their skill set, because they did not get to spend enough time learning and ingraining the skills prior to graduation. Also, after graduation, the officers were deprived of a robust probationary “break-in” period that would have allowed them to fill in the blanks and establish a solid foundation for skill development.
While the CHP Academy’s training compared favorably to others, the state of the art of law enforcement training at this time was still immature and inadequate across the profession. There was a large disconnect between the conditions encountered in the real world environment and the academic training environment of the Academy. Simply stated, much of the training, in particular the combat firearms training, was not realistic and was insufficient to prepare them for what they would encounter on patrol after graduation.
Realism has always been and always will be a challenging issue for any law enforcement training program, but it was an especially difficult problem for trainers and trainees in this era. Even if Cadets Gore, Frago, Pence, and Alleyn had achieved perfect scores in training, the sad truth is that the curriculum itself was deficient and did not accurately reflect the way things went down in the real world beyond Meadowview Drive. Indeed, Cadet Gore achieved distinction as the best shot in his class, and it would logically follow that, if the training program was adequate, he should have performed at a very high level during the Newhall shooting. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and Officer Gore achieved symbolic status as proof of the fact that there is often a low correlation between training proficiency and real world accomplishment.
In his study of this very issue, Thomas J. Aveni of the Police Policy Studies Council (PPSC) drew the conclusion that there is little statistical evidence right now to produce a link between performance in training and real world hit potential in a gunfight.44 Aveni speculates a potential cause for this disconnect is because:
“There’s little resemblance between what we train officers for and what they actually encounter on the street … there are glaring deficiencies in the way cops are prepared for what turn out to be fairly typical circumstances in gunfights.”45
While Aveni’s analysis was intended as an observation on contemporary law enforcement firearms training programs, his words are no less accurate in describing the training program that Officer Gore encountered at the CHP Academy, in 1968. Cadet Gore’s exceptional performance in the CHP firearms training program indicates he was fully capable of learning the required skills and performing them to the staff’s satisfaction. The only trouble is that the CHP’s program was oriented towards teaching marksmanship, while what Cadet Gore really needed was training in how to fight with firearms, a different matter entirely.
Officer Gore’s opponents did not suffer this problem. Each of them had previously killed and were experienced at using weapons as part of their criminal activities. They had developed excellent survival and close combat skills during their lengthy prison terms, and were veterans of multiple assaults in these institutions (indeed, Twining had killed a fellow inmate during one prison fight). In this respect, their “training” occurred in the real world, and it couldn’t have been more realistic. Additionally, they frequently participated in firearms training, and in fact were returning home from a target shooting and firearms testing trip when they were pulled over by Officer Gore and his partner. Thus, in most respects, Davis and Twining were much better trained and prepared for an armed confrontation than the officers who pulled them over.
Accuracy with the Handgun
Three of the four officers killed at Newhall fired a total of 11 shots from their revolvers (Officer Frago fired no shots), before they were murdered by Davis and Twining. Officer Gore fired one shot, Officer Pence fired six shots, and Officer Alleyn fired four shots during the battle, but none of these officers managed to hit their intended targets.46
In contrast, Davis fired 10 rounds from handguns and Twining fired 14 rounds from handguns during the fight. Davis struck with two of his rounds (hitting Officer Gore at contact range), and Twining struck with seven of his rounds (hitting Officer Frago at short range with two, and Officer Pence at intermediate range—perhaps seven to 10 yards—with four, and at short range with a fifth).47
In the aftermath of Newhall, there has been much discussion about the reasons why the officers did not perform as well with their handguns as their foes. We will probably never know the complete answer to this question, but we can certainly understand some of the issues involved, and they resist simplification. To the dismay of those who are seeking for quick answers, there is no single reason why events occurred the way they did.
One consistent problem for the officers involved in the Newhall shooting is that all of them were forced into a reactionary mode from the very beginning—that is, each of the officers was already being attacked by his foe before he could understand and assimilate the information and begin to respond. In a classic case of “getting inside their OODA loop,” Davis and Twining were already acting on their decisions to kill the officers before the officers even understood what was happening, which placed them at a great disadvantage from the very beginning.48
In example, Officer Gore’s first notice that he was facing a deadly threat came when Twining killed Officer Frago, then turned his gun on Officer Gore. This placed Officer Gore several steps behind Twining, as Twining was already shooting at him before Officer Gore could even orient to the threat and decide to clear leather. Similarly, Officers Pence and Alleyn came under fire before they had even stopped their vehicle at the scene, placing them even further behind their opponents, because they had to stop the vehicle, exit it, locate their opponents, and access their weapons before they could begin to return fire on the people who were already trying to kill them.
This is more than a problem of cognitive lag time or reactionary gap, however. It’s true that the time deficit is difficult to make up, and it places the officer at an immediate disadvantage as he scrambles to catch up to his foe. However, there is also a physiological element that rears its head and makes the situation even more difficult for the officer to recover from.
In circumstances where officers perceive their lives to be threatened, their sympathetic nervous system (SNS, which wrests control of bodily functions from the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the body in normal, non-stress environments), activates and directs the body to produce a powerful mix of hormones that are designed to prepare the body for fight or flight. This is especially the case when time and distance to the threat are short, or when an officer is surprised or startled by the threat, as each of the Newhall officers were.49 These chemicals produce beneficial results such as increased strength and resistance to pain, but they also produce some negative results, such as: loss of dexterity; muscle tremors; diminished hearing and sight capabilities (to include all forms of perceptual narrowing, such as auditory exclusion, decreased near vision acuity, loss of peripheral vision, loss of depth perception, etc.); loss of processing and decision making abilities; diminished memory; and overall decreased cognition.50 As Bruce Siddle, the pioneering, cutting-edge researcher in the field of survival stress and combat human factors, indicates, activation of the sympathetic nervous system makes you “fast, quick and strong,” but also “dumb.”51 Siddle notes that the SNS has a profound effect on “perception, processing, decision-making, motor skills, and memory” which, in the most highly stressed individuals, can initiate “a catastrophic failure of the cognitive processing capabilities, leading to fatal increases in reaction time … . “52
The cognitive and motor precision necessary to fight effectively with firearms deteriorates rapidly in this state, particularly in individuals whose inexperience, lack of proper training, lack of confidence, surprise, or natural demeanor make them more likely to suffer increased levels of stress and less capable of controlling the stress response.53 Individuals who start out behind the OODA loop of their adversary are even less fortunate, because “lost time in a survival encounter initiates a chain reaction of escalating stress” which enhances the negative effects and makes them harder to control.54 Thus, the officers in Newhall were not only battling Twining and Davis, they were battling for control of their own bodies. The stress hormones being dumped into their bodies by the SNS made them “deaf, dumb, and blind,” and their skills with their handguns plummeted as a result.55
Their enemies, Davis and Twining, were probably not experiencing the same levels of stress and anxiety and the corresponding decrease in performance, because they were the ones controlling the action. Davis and Twining were the hunters, not the prey. They were the ones who had completed their OODA loops and who were forcing their surprised opponents to scramble and react to their moves. Their confidence, control, and dominance of the situation allowed them better control of their body’s SNS response. This increased calm allowed them to take full advantage of their sensory systems, allowed higher levels of motor coordination, and increased their processing and decision-making abilities, leading to much higher levels of overall performance compared to the officers.
Davis and Twining also doubtlessly benefited from a radically different psychological and emotional perspective than that of the officers. These men were experienced killers who had lived most of their lives immersed in a world of violence, aggression, crime, and struggle. Violence had no emotional or ethical component for them, and it would never have occurred to them to show restraint or to consider the fates of their victims. They were sociopaths who saw the killing of the officers as little more than a business transaction that had to be completed to ensure their survival and freedom. They were “in their element” during the battle and had a superior mindset for combat. The violence of the fight did not produce as strong an emotional reaction in the felons as it did in the officers who confronted them, and so they were less susceptible to the debilitating effects that such stress induces on physical performance.
Another issue that plagued the officers at Newhall was the complexity of targeting their agile opponents. As previously discussed, Davis and Twining were in a constant state of motion throughout the gunfight, making it very hard for the officers to hit them, particularly since their SNS response was robbing them of visual acuity.56 Davis and Twining did almost all their shooting on the move. In contrast, the officers did their shooting from static positions, were not nearly as mobile, and presented less challenging targets for their opponents. Both Officer Gore and Officer Frago were shot as they stood nearby with both feet firmly planted. Officer Pence was shot as he knelt in a static position to reload his weapon at the rear of his car, and Officer Alleyn, the most mobile of the officers, was also shot as he popped up to fire his weapon from a fixed position at the rear of the other patrol car.
Davis and Twining made very effective use of cover and concealment during the fight. During much of the battle, they fired from protected positions behind their Pontiac and exposed little of themselves. The Pontiac sustained a large amount of damage from CHP bullets, but the felons were able to escape serious injury and continue fighting. During the latter stages of the fight, Twining moved into the shadows on Officer Pence’s flank and launched his attack from there, a position that made it difficult for the officers to locate him in and hit with return fire.
The felons also had the advantage of distance over the officers. Both Officer Gore and Officer Frago were shot within arms length, therefore simplifying the marksmanship “problem” for Davis and Twining. In contrast, Officers Pence and Alleyn were forced to engage Davis and Twining at greater distances, near the outer edges of the battle space. During this stage of the battle, neither the officers nor the felons made hits, and it was only when the felons closed the distance with their opponents (as Officer Pence was reloading and Officer Alleyn was changing both weapons and defensive positions), that they were able to get hits on their adversaries once again.
While definitive statistics have been hard to assemble, the historical hit probabilities for law enforcement officers in the latter part of the 20th century have hovered somewhere around 15 percent, indicating a relatively low rate of success.57 Given the fact that the officers in the Newhall shooting faced a very challenging situation—attacked by ambush, multiple attackers armed with an arsenal of powerful guns, maneuvering opponents, medium range distances—and perhaps even more challenging than many of the shootings that make up that 15-percent hit ratio, their inability to hit their opponents perhaps becomes less surprising.
It’s interesting to note that the person with the greatest hit ratio in the fight was civilian Gary Kness, whose single shot struck Davis.58 Kness specifically recalled that he used two hands on the weapon (which was notable, since throughout history to that point, most handgun doctrine—military, law enforcement, and civilian—centered on the use of only one hand; recall that much of the officer’s training emphasized one handed firing) and planted his elbows on the patrol car for stability. He fired the gun in single-action and hit his target (“I knew I had him because he spun around”), then realized the revolver was empty when he attempted a second shot.59 Mr. Kness was certainly operating in a state of significant arousal and elevated stress, but he was able to control himself sufficiently to accomplish the task at hand.60
Mister Kness was acting out a plan of his own creation and was momentarily in charge of the fight—he wasn’t reacting to someone else’s plan, he was making them react to his. He was working inside of Davis’ OODA loop, which made his situation radically different than that of the slain officers. For a moment, he became the hunter and Davis the prey.
The Question of Ammunition
Much has been made of the fact that the three officers who fired their handguns during the Newhall fight were all shooting powerful .357 Magnum ammunition in their revolvers, despite the fact that they had apparently trained only with milder .38 Special ammunition.61 It has been suggested in many quarters (including in that of the CHP) that the officers were unaccustomed to the increased recoil, flash, and noise of the more powerful ammunition and that this negatively affected their ability to hit their targets with their handguns. In fact, this conclusion has become widely recognized throughout law enforcement as one of the principal lessons from Newhall, and is among the first recalled whenever the subject of Newhall is discussed.
The CHP was so convinced the lack of training experience with the powerful .357 Magnum ammunition affected the officer’s marksmanship, it implemented radical changes in its ammunition and training policies in the years after the shooting. Officers who purchased their own .357 Magnum ammunition were henceforth required to train and qualify with it, and the use of low-powered, .38 Special wadcutter ammunition for training was eliminated. By 1976, the use of all .357 Magnum ammunition was completely prohibited, and all officers were required to use and carry the newly standardized (and less powerful) .38 Special jacketed hollowpoint round that was issued by the state for all training and duty purposes (See Appendix A).
Satisfied that it had learned the lesson and made the appropriate corrections to policy, training and equipment, the CHP moved on to other focus areas. But were they right?
Forty years of learning and experience since the Newhall shooting indicates that, while there are good reasons for officers to train with full-power ammunition that replicates the performance of their duty loads, it is unlikely that the ammunition used in training has much influence on officer performance during a shooting.62 Instead, it is far more likely that other factors will be the dominant influence on the officer’s performance.
In the aftermath of Newhall, cutting edge researchers like Bruce Siddle and police psychologists like Dr. Alexis Artwohl identified how SNS responses such as auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, temporal distortion, dissociation, sensory exclusion, and dramatic increases in strength all make the recoil, noise, and flash of the officer’s firearm less noticeable, and even sometimes unnoticeable.63 In fact, many officers who have been interviewed following shooting incidents report that their guns sounded like small “pops” instead of the larger “boom” they were used to, and others have reported the total absence of felt recoil and blast, sometimes leading each group to fear that their weapons had somehow malfunctioned during the fight.64 Some officers, like the legendary Jim Cirillo of the famed New York Police Department Stakeout Squad, have experienced a strange detachment from firing the gun; in Cirillo’s case, he found himself asking “Who the hell is shooting my gun?” in the middle of his first gunfight.65
All of these experiences, combined with many others from 40 years of interviewing gunfight survivors, indicate that Evan Marshall is correct in his analysis that “recoil, noise, and flash are training issues, not gunfight issues.”66 The effects of the sympathetic nervous system work together to dull the senses to the recoil, noise, and flash generated by the firing of a weapon and diminish the possibility that these characteristics will have an effect on the officer’s performance during a stressful situation, even if they appear to be significant players during a lower state of arousal (such as in training).
With respect to Newhall, it is much more likely that Officers Gore, Pence, and Alleyn failed to hit their targets with their revolvers due to the effects of survival stress on their performance and the difficulty of hitting highly mobile targets firing from cover and concealment, than due to their lack of training experience with full-power .357 Magnum ammunition. The CHP’s move to formalize its ammunition policy and standardize equipment in the wake of Newhall was perhaps a beneficial step for the department in many ways, but to justify it solely on the basis of what happened in Newhall doesn’t seem to pass muster today, especially in light of recent learning about human physiology and the accumulated experience of officers who are gunfight survivors.
There are still very important reasons for officers to train with ammunition that mimics the energy and performance of their duty ammunition, but habituating the officer to recoil and noise does not seem to be as important as it was once thought to be.
Reloading Skills
An additional tactical concern in the Newhall fight centers on revolver reloading skills. During the course of the Newhall shooting, Officer Pence emptied his revolver and was forced to reload it from behind the cover of his patrol car while under fire from Twining. His difficulty in reloading the revolver has historically been the source of much debate, and it bears further analysis.
Officer Pence has come under scrutiny in some circles for his inability to reload his revolver quickly and reenter the fight before he was ambushed and killed by Twining. While a faster reload would have been welcomed, there were several obstacles that stood in the way of this critical goal. For example, Officer Pence, like all CHP officers at the time, was armed with a six-shot revolver and carried 12 rounds of spare ammunition in dump pouches on his Sam Browne. Each of these dump pouches was designed to deposit six rounds of loose ammunition into the hand after the snap was undone, at which point an officer would load them individually into the chambers of the revolver.67 This action requires a fair amount of dexterity, as the shooter must juggle and manipulate all six rounds with a single hand, since the other is holding the weapon. Moving a cartridge into position where it can be controlled, oriented into the proper direction, and guided into the cylinder without dropping any of the remaining rounds can be a challenge even when there is no pressure on the shooter, but doing so under the debilitating effects of survival stress becomes even more difficult, as fine motor skills have deteriorated, cognitive processes have diminished, and massive amounts of adrenaline have induced uncontrollable shaking.
To add to Officer Pence’s difficulties, he was under fire from Twining during the course of reloading, which induced more stress and also forced him to take a position of low cover, down on his knees and bending forward at the waist. This position crowded and pinched the area around his gunbelt between his abdomen and upper thighs, which undoubtedly interfered with the smooth operation of the already clumsy dump pouch.
Two common styles of dump pouches used by CHP officers from the 1940s through the early 1970s. In the version on the left, each of the cells flop down to spill cartridges from the leather box when the top snap is released. In the version on the right, the cartridges fall free from the inverted pouch when the bottom flap is unsnapped. During the Newhall fight, Officer Pence reloaded from the inverted pouch design. Photo courtesy of the author.
During the course of reloading, Officer Pence was shot in both legs (including a serious compound fracture of the left femur), once in the hip, and once in the abdomen by Twining. Despite these serious and painful injuries, Officer Pence bravely completed his reload and was preparing to reengage Twining when he was killed at contact range by the felon, who had advanced on his position as the wounded Officer Pence struggled with the task.
It’s notable that Officer Pence has frequently been accused of pocketing his spent brass in the middle of the fight in some kind of unconscious, reflexive action borne of academy firing range habits and practices. He has been criticized for this action, because it is presumed that it cost him precious moments that he needed to finish his reload and get back into the fight, and it is speculated that the action cost him his life, because it delayed his reload a moment too long.
This accusation is categorically false. The truth of the matter is that Officer Pence dumped his spent brass on the ground, roughly abeam the rear door on the driver’s side of his police unit, and did not waste time pocketing the worthless cases.68 While Officer Pence may have performed other reflexive actions under the stress of the event that would otherwise seem nonsensical (such as donning his hat as he exited the patrol car under fire, in accordance with CHP uniform policies and ingrained habits and just as Officer Alleyn had), he did not commit the infamous sin that became one of Newhall’s most enduring myths.69
Officer Pence’s reload took longer than desired, but it was the poor design and ergonomics of the dump pouch, a crouched position that interfered with the smooth operation of the pouch, a stress-induced loss of fine motor skills, and the punishing gunshot wounds inflicted by Twining that sealed his fate. There have indeed been other confirmed reports of officers engaged in battle who have senselessly retained their spent brass out of involuntary habit, but Officer Pence is not among them.70
Despite Officer Pence’s innocence on this charge, it is important to recognize that, under stress, people will revert to the habits that have been reinforced through repetition and training, even if they are not helpful or sensible, and therefore it is critical to ensure that negative habits (such as retaining spent brass to simplify cleanup on the range), are not allowed to creep into the training process. Similarly, there is an obligation to ensure that the proper habits are deliberately programmed into training.
While Officer Pence did not waste time policing his spent brass during the fight, it is true he spent precious moments filling the cylinder of his revolver to full capacity, instead of accepting a partial load of three or four rounds and returning to the fight much more quickly. Given the fact that Twining was closing on him and wounding him with gunfire, Officer Pence would probably have been better off accepting the partial load and shooting back at Twining with a reduced number of rounds in the gun, than waiting to return fire until the gun was loaded to full capacity.71
Interviews conducted with officers who served at the time indicate that this situation was not specifically addressed in training at the academy.72 It can be safely assumed that most reloads in the field would be conducted under stress, loose rounds would be fumbled, and that there would be a pressing need to finish their reloads quickly so the officer could get back in the fight and maintain continuity of fire. Under these circumstances, it would seem a reasonable tradeoff to sacrifice a full-capacity reload for the speed of getting back on target, especially with an opponent advancing on the officer’s position. Had Officer Pence been trained to deal with this entirely foreseeable problem, it’s possible that he might have recognized his situation and employed the tactic with enough time to shoot Twining as he made his final run at the rear of Unit 78-12.73
Additionally, it appears that Officer Pence reloaded his weapon at waist level and brought his head down to see what he was doing, where his posture and the bill of his cap robbed him of the ability to monitor his environment and detect Twining’s approach. The nature and construction of a revolver makes it more natural, comfortable, and efficient to hold the revolver at waist level during reloading, so it’s not surprising that he gravitated to this position, but it does make it much more difficult to monitor the surrounding environment.74 This is especially critical, because it is likely that Officer Pence’s SNS reaction was robbing him of his peripheral vision capabilities anyhow, turning his normal field of view into a narrow tunnel. It’s unlikely that his physiology would have allowed him to pick up Twining in his peripheral vision, but if Officer Pence had been taught to load the revolver up in the center of his field of view and with his head erect, he might have been able to see Twining’s advance within that central cone of vision. This might have provided the cue he needed to discontinue loading, accept what he had already loaded into the gun, and get back into the fight.
To the CHP’s everlasting credit, immediate changes were incorporated into training processes and equipment was rapidly upgraded following the Newhall shooting. Administrative practices on the range that encouraged bad habits (such as policing brass during a course of fire or loading from trays or boxes instead of the ammunition carriers on the officer’s Sam Browne), were eliminated, and firearms instructors emphasized improvements in tactics and procedures that increased officer safety.75 In late 1971 through early 1972, the department began to issue newly developed speedloaders to officers in lieu of the problematic dump pouches, making them the first in the nation to do so. The speedloaders were much easier to use and significantly enhanced the reliability and speed of the reloading operation. The department obviously recognized the lessons that were written in Officer Pence’s blood and did what they could to correct the conditions that led to his fate.
Skill with the Shotgun
As noted previously, shotguns were relatively new additions to the CHP at the time of Newhall, having only been added to each patrol car a few years before the shootout.76 As a result, CHP shotgun training and doctrine was still in its infancy when Officer Frago grabbed the Remington 870 from the Lektro-Lok and exited Unit 78-8 into the cold night air to confront Davis and Twining.77
Earlier sections have addressed Officer Frago’s approach to the Pontiac with the shotgun held in an unusable position. Despite the fact that this stance was one of two approved methods for carrying the shotgun in the California Highway Patrol Shotgun Training Manual at the time, this action was tactically unsound for several reasons.78
Aside from his inability to employ the weapon with its butt resting on his hip and the barrel in the air (as previously discussed), the position was completely untenable from a weapon retention perspective. With only one hand on the weapon and placed at a distance roughly one third of the way up the gun, Officer Frago had no strength or leverage to withstand an attack. An offender who got his hands on the barrel or forearm of the shotgun could easily lever it backwards, using Officer Frago’s hand as a pivot point, and strip it from his grasp. Even if Officer Frago had attempted to hold onto the gun, his wrist would have been bent painfully backwards and his grip on the gun would have been broken, perhaps along with the wrist itself. Even a less sophisticated attack, like a simple snatch with one hand on the barrel and another on the buttstock could still overpower the officer, who had only one hand on the gun to resist it. Regardless of how it was accomplished, the fact is that if Twining had simply attacked Officer Frago with his hands, the loaded shotgun probably would have been his in moments.
Officer Frago was not the only officer to experience difficulty with his shotgun. Officer Alleyn also encountered problems with the long gun. Upon exiting the patrol car, Officer Alleyn chambered a round in his shotgun and immediately made his way around the rear of Unit 78-8, taking up a defensive position at the open passenger door. In the stress of the fight, it appears he cycled the slide an additional time and ejected an unfired round onto the ground, where it was later recovered by investigators. It is presumed that Officer Alleyn had forgotten that he had already loaded the shotgun’s chamber and cycled the gun an additional time to ensure it was ready to fire.79 This action deprived him of several precious seconds in the middle of the fight and, more importantly, it also deprived him of 25 percent of his ammunition capacity.80
This latter point is especially critical considering the fact that Officer Alleyn ran the shotgun empty in the fight. The shotgun was the most powerful weapon available to Officer Alleyn, and it was also the easiest to hit with, not only because of the nine-pellet pattern triggered with each shot, but because long guns have superior handling qualities that generally make them easier to use. In fact, Officer Alleyn was the only officer to hit either Davis or Twining with his weapon, and he did this with the shotgun.81 If he had been given the opportunity to fire one more round before the shotgun ran dry, it’s possible he could have scored an additional and more devastating hit on one or both of his opponents, thus turning the tide of the battle.
Alas, it was not to be. In the end, the officers were unable to rise above the level of their limited training and make effective use of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal. This was not the case with their opponents, however, as both Davis and Twining were very experienced in the use of long arms.82 Although Twining did not access a long gun during the confrontation, Davis made effective use of his own shotgun to kill Officer Alleyn in a charge on his position late in the fight.