Customer Reviews

The Newhall Incident: America's Worst Uniformed Cop Massacre

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was a very interesting book that looks at the deaths of four California Highway Patrol officers in 1970. The story is told in an engaging fashion that draws the reader in, in the style of The Onion Field. The background information is good, and paints a strong image. When describing the actual event and its aftermath, I was left wanting more detail. While I realize that it was not designed to be a true after-action report, I was still left wanting for some of the details. I would like to have seen a large section on the lessons learned from the event. All in all a good book, but there is more to be told.

I read this book while I was an explorer with the CHP. It has good background information and the stories of both sides of this conflict prior to the incident. It seems that it focuses more on the criminals, and what drove them to do it, but it lacks many of the officer safety innovations that the CHP developed after this incident. Everything from basic PMA to felony stops were revised because of this. While I was at the explorer academy, they stressed this incident to us over and over, and why we needed to be alert, in shape, and knowledgeable in out tactics as an individual, and as a team. Now I know why, after reading about the darkest day in the history of the California Highway Patrol. But the book is lacking, and could have been a bit better. A CHP PT instructor could probably give you an as good or better account of what happened.

I borrowed this book from the library, as Massad Ayoob's mention of it in his book The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery on why speed loaders were mandated piqued my interest. All in all, I agree with what the other reviewers have said here: The author took quite a bit of liberty in conjecturing what all of the involved parties said, and what was going on in their minds. I'd hope that at least for the officer's background history he interviewed the family and friends of the fallen officers to get a feel for what they may have been saying or thinking during the different periods covered in this book and gotten their feedback. My paraphrase of a line the author may have said about one of the felons: "Davis looked out over the water, and wondered what the future had in store for him. Would he be going back to the slammer? [Bleep] no." I would doubt that the author could have had interviews with the felons' families, because, as I understood it, they both came from broken homes. I'd best categorize this as "Historical fiction," where the author took the facts that were known and then proceeded to take factual liberties with filling in the details. That's not to say that it wasn't an enjoyable read, though. I'd still recommend this as an entertaining piece. Just don't believe all that you read in here, though.

I read this book in one sitting of about 4 hours. It is an excellent book - well written with short, realistic chapters. I could not put it down and I have been haunted by it ever since. As a former California police officer, I remember analyzing this event in the academy. It truly did change how law enforcement agencies trained for many emergent situations. I also went to high school(Merced, California) with Walt Frago's little sister; so I also had a personal connection to this story.

Although it is difficult to read, I highly recommend this book. I have always appreciated the men and women who guard our communities but this book helped me reaffirm that there is such a "thin blue line" between "us" and "them". God Bless these men and women who serve and the families of all law enforcement personnel.

I was looking for a factual acount of the Newhall Incident. The author's attempt at clairvoyance was of no interest to me. A more prophylactic discussion of the aftermath of the shootings, and the measures instituted by the CHP to prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again would have been far more interesting. The book borders on more fiction than fact. From my standpoint the book was disapointing.

I was 30 miles away the night of that tragedy, following the situation in real time on the radio, so the event was seared into my memory. The weakness of this book is the amount of speculative diagogue written of the killers leading up to that shootout. Whatever their motivation or their troubled background, they're just a couple more hardened criminals undeserving of the notoriety. I would have expected more from the CHP author about his fallen comrades and the impact on their families than was written.

"The Newhall Incident" interested me because the crime occurred in my hometown and I personally witnessed the police action in attempting to capture one of the perpetrators. But the book read too much like fiction in that the author constantly expressed thoughts and ideas on behalf of the people involved in the incident. Since those people lost their lives that day, we can never know what they were really thinking. The book would have been more valuable if the author had stuck to the facts. He also went way overboard on the use of profanity which made for difficult reading and detracted from his attempt to draw a psychological profile of the perpetrators.

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