The Immediate Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath of the Newhall shooting, the CHP was desperate to understand how it could lose four officers in as many minutes and launched a thorough investigation into the details of the shooting. The homicide investigation was actually handled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office (LASO), but the CHP actively analyzed the shooting in an attempt to discover what had gone wrong and what needed to be fixed.1
By July 1, 1970, the shooting investigation had provided enough details to allow the CHP to release to all uniformed personnel an information bulletin that chronicled the events of the shooting. In the weeks and months to come, the analysis would continue, as would the preparations for the trial of Bobby Davis, in October 1970. Some officers of the period would later comment that, under the stress of the situation, the comprehensive effort sometimes devolved into blame fixing and finger pointing in which the fallen officers themselves were mostly forgotten amid the criticisms and accusations, but in the end the net effect was positive.2
As a result of this intense scrutiny, the department identified deficiencies in training, policies, tactics, and equipment that it wanted to correct, and work began almost immediately on making the required changes. A brief look at those changes, by category, is in order.3
The most obvious development of the Newhall shooting was the creation of a new high-risk traffic stop procedure that became known throughout the law enforcement community simply as the “felony-stop” procedure. While numerous improvements were made to the CHP’s former high-risk or hot stop procedure, the principal advantage to the new procedure is that it kept the officers in a solid defensive position at the patrol car to allow them to maintain tactical dominance while they commanded the suspects out of their car and back towards the officers. Prior to Newhall, the CHP’s standard procedure was to send an officer forward to the suspect vehicle to affect an arrest, but, after Newhall, officers no longer had to give up their advantage and security to move forward into the suspect’s killing zone. Instead, the suspects were removed from their defensive position in a controlled manner and were brought back to the ensconced officers, where they could be searched and placed into custody in an environment that was more favorable to the lawmen.
This new procedure was not strictly a CHP creation, but rather the result of a combined effort of multiple law enforcement agencies that all contributed to the process. Elements were borrowed from the operating procedures of different agencies, and the final product offered such an enhanced level of officer safety that it was quickly adopted as a standard within law enforcement.
Other changes in CHP tactics resulted from Newhall, as well. Officers were taught the importance of waiting for backup before committing themselves when the circumstances warranted it. They were also taught to appropriately match their tactics to the situation. For instance, the crime of brandishing, which had once been treated as a minor offense in some areas of the state, was now recognized as a much more serious situation that demanded a higher level of alertness and more sophisticated tactics to deal with it.
There were significant changes in CHP search and handcuffing procedures (“Physical Methods of Arrest,” or PMA, in CHP parlance), after Newhall. Instead of relying upon a one-size-fits-all approach, a variety of search positions were developed and taught to officers so as to accommodate the different tactical situations that a CHP officer might encounter in the field. Additionally, there was an increased emphasis on cuffing potentially violent or armed suspects prior to searching them.
Training
Immediate in-service and Academy training in the new felony stop and PMA procedures were initiated in the wake of Newhall, before the ink had even dried on the syllabus. Throughout all phases of this training, the officers were taught to approach situations with more caution, a greater state of awareness, and an appreciation for not overcommitting themselves prior to the arrival of backup. The great lesson of the Newhall shooting was that “Time is your friend,” and the CHP’s new training emphasized that officers should take advantage of this critical asset to maximize their safety.
The CHP’s new emphasis on officer safety and increased situational awareness was perhaps best symbolized by a training tool, developed by the staff at the Academy, to promote a new kind of tactical thinking amongst the officers. The tool was an acronym that condensed many of the critical learning lessons from the Newhall fight into a memorable format:4
N = Never approach a felony or high-risk vehicle until all suspects are out of the car.
E = Evaluate the offense for what it is, not for what it appears to be.
W = Wait for backup before leaving yourself unprotected.
H = Have a plan of action.
A = Always maintain the advantage.
L = Look for the unusual before you go into a loaded situation.
L = Leave the scene—drive by, through, or around if in doubt about your safety.
Another significant development in CHP training was the adoption of a more realistic firearms training program. The new program became less of an academic exercise in marksmanship and more of a training program with combat utility. Administrative practices that could create negative habits, such as policing brass during the course of fire or loading from ammo buckets, were gradually eliminated. Silhouette targets completely replaced bull’s-eye targets over time, and officers began to shoot courses of fire that emphasized skills such as weak-hand firing, single-hand firing, reloading from duty gear, night shooting, malfunction drills, and other relevant skills. Many of these courses of fire were fired in dynamic scenarios that involved movement and time pressure. Additionally, the CHP training began to formalize and mandate instruction in shotgun skills, to increase competence and confidence in this important weapon. Furthermore, firearms training policies were changed to mandate the use of duty ammunition during training, leaving the use of low-powered training ammunition a thing of the past. New restrictions on use of non-duty ammunition during training required changes not only to training policies, but also to contracting and budgeting policies.
The decentralized nature of CHP firearms training left a lot of discretion to the area training officers and rangemasters, so the adoption of many of these improvements was spotty at first, but over time they became the core of a new firearms training program that advanced CHP training far beyond the pre-Newhall level.5
Policies
Accompanying the changes in tactics and training were adjustments in associated agency policies. Most significantly, the CHP issued a new order entitled “High Risk and Felony Stops” which gave officers more latitude to draw their weapons if they believed they were dealing with a dangerous suspect. The image-conscious CHP, which had previously punished officers for their “offensive behavior” when they placed their hand on their holstered weapon during a tense stop, was growing up.6 The restrictions on use of non-duty ammunition during training required changes not only to training policies, but to contracting and budgeting policies as well.
Staffing policies for junior officers were analyzed to see if there was a way to avoid assigning rookie officers to dangerous beats before they were fully ready to operate on their own, but, in truth, the demographics of the rapidly expanding agency worked against such changes being put into statewide practice. There were just too many rookies on the force to pair all of them with more veteran officers.
One of the most influential policy changes centered on the use of shotguns by patrolmen. After Newhall, the taped seals on the shotguns disappeared overnight, along with the requirement to write a memorandum when the shotguns were deployed from the vehicle. The culture that had made officers reluctant to use this lifesaving tool out of administrative concerns gradually began to disappear.
Equipment
Perhaps the easiest of the post-Newhall fixes came in the form of new and enhanced equipment adopted by the CHP.
The CHP became the first major agency in the nation to issue speedloaders to their officers, in recognition of the blood lesson taught by Officer Pence. Various designs of speedloaders had been available from companies like Bucheimer and others as early as 1964, but they had not been standard issue prior to this time. This situation was corrected immediately, with the CHP issuing a pair of speedloader units to every officer in order to enhance their ability to reload quickly under fire.
By 1976, the newly adopted speedloaders contained the new standardized load of the Highway Patrol, a .38 Special jacketed hollowpoint loaded to +P+ pressures. This load was required for all duty and training use. The lax ammunition policies of the past that had allowed officers to purchase and carry their own .357 Magnum ammunition (but failed to mandate training with it), were a thing of the past, and the Highway Patrol would not see the use of .357 Magnum ammunition again for almost 20 years.7
The shotguns lost their taped seals, and they gained spare ammunition pouches that were attached to the buttstocks of the weapons, providing officers with a reserve of ammunition to top off the weapon as necessary.
Car radios were upgraded and modified to allow them to monitor both car-to-dispatch and car-to-car transmissions, instead of just the latter.8 This enhanced communications and officer safety.
Other equipment developments would soon come, including the issuance of chemical mace for non-lethal threats and soft body armor to enhance survivability.