Miami Shootout: A New Twist or Revisionists at Work!

One of the major factors effecting marksmanship in that exchange was that the bad guys were in a dark shaded area (under a tree IIRC), while the good guys were all highlighted in bright sunlight. Moreover, this caused the good guys to be squinting and shooting more or less into a black hole in which they couldn't clearly see their targets. In other words the bad guys had concealment in the open by virtue of the sun/shade circumstances. Not the only factor by any means, but a major one nonetheless.
 
If you've got a few hours, check this out.

Part 1a, page 69 has the make, model, and serial numbers of all the agent's guns. The blacked out names are guys who were on the stakeout, but didn't get into the shooting. Since these guys could buy their guns upon retirement, there is a very slim chance some of them are floating around somewhere.
 
"The FBI made the classic mistake of bringing pistols to a rifle fight."

+1 It is a matter of firepower - or in this case, a lack thereof.
 
This whole "Thing" has been used as an example of what 'Not to Do' during many training classes for many Years since it happened. Lots of mistakes were made and there were some truly Major ones made. But, learning by mistakes where people get killed isn't the best way to do things. But, lots of people have to learn the hard way.
 
Wow, I'd never even heard of this incident before this thread.
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I suppose I was asleep at the time, which is normal for me, as far as cop shoot-outs go. In those days, I assumed cops were hardly ever real gun men. I did not recall that both of the murderers had considerable military training. I don't investigate crimes so wouldn't know, but that would seem to put them ahead of the average street punk. Of course, the agents didn't know that.

They did know these guys were well-armed. Reading the radio transcript, there is the appearance that there was a cooler voice that might have averted the disaster. But he seemed to have been overruled - by emotion. As a result, they got caught out, in the worst way.
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Of course hindsight is easily 20-20, and waiting for the uniformed guys to come along may have served no purpose except to get some of them killed, too. Reading the transcript, I just kept thinking I would have been scared to death to get that close to those guys with that Mini!
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Thanks to SIGP220 for providing the link. Even truncated, as it was, it was still interesting.
 
Originally posted by TNDixieGirl:
Wow, I'd never even heard of this incident before this thread.
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Hey; Hollywierd even made a movie about this one and believe it or not it was pretty close to reality. I was still Instructing at the time and read the reports as they came out. A couple of the more important lessons learned that day were "If you've got a 'Vest' and are working a Stakeout, the truck of your car is a lousy place for it. Same, same for heavier artillery!"
 
The tragic events of that day have had great influence on law enforcement training and equipment. It led to the FBI testing of ammunition that is so well known today. The Smith and Wesson 1076 was adopted by the FBI after the initial tests. Smith and Wesson looked at the performance of the downloaded 10mm and realized they could get the same performance out of a shorter case and created the .40 S&W. So when you see a law enforcement officer carrying a .40 caliber pistol and highly engineered ammunition, you are looking at some of the results of the Miami shootings.
 
Part of this was politics. I worked for a different Federal Agency at the time this happen.

We were NOT under all the restrictions that the FBI operated under. We were much better armed before the shotting and even more so after. It also didn't take a bunch of testing and hand wringing about ammo and guns for us to "upgrade".

As for as not knowing who they were dealing with and not knowing they were ex military simply isn't true.

The other thing stated early on by somebody still holds true, some people die HARD. As a combat vet prior to going into Law Enforcement I'd already seen guys stay in the fight with fatal and in the end life ending wounds, for a long time.

RWT
 
The problem the FBI had, was that they didn't hire the A-team. They could have atleast used some of the tactics shown in the opening trailer: covering fire with mini-14s and drop a wrecking ball on the suspect vehicle...
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One thing I don't see mentioned here is that the search for what turned out to be Platt/Mattix involved quite a bit of time, weeks not hours. While the agents may have started out fully geared up (within regs at the time), when the ball opened, the gear was in the rear of the cars.

There was more than one agent with a gun on the seat-those disappeared in the multi vehicle crash.
 
I don't know if things have changed since those days within the FBI but I always found it pretty 'strange' that they did the "Investigation" themselves.

I know they are currently carrying on an Investigation of one of the local LEOs who's story has been highlighted here - the Deputy who beat up on the 15 year old girl in the holding cell.

I expect they'll do a fine job and things will come out the way they should. I never believed in an Agency 'investigating' themselves. I so an awful lot of "stuff" get swept under the rug while I was in the Military because they did their own 'investigating'. I know that has changed over the Years and I think it is a change for the better.
 
If you go to You Tube and type "1986 miami shootout" in the search engine, a movie reenactment is posted.

I don't know about the FBI guys and their background (Ed Mireles was one tough cat and some of the other G-men struck me as pretty scrappy fighters too), but my hunch is that Platt was the best trained guy there and better armed. If Gordon McNeil hadn't hit Matix in the face early on, I'm guessing things would have been far worse than they were for the FBI, as hard as that is to imagine.
 
Originally posted by WR Moore:
One thing I don't see mentioned here is that the search for what turned out to be Platt/Mattix involved quite a bit of time, weeks not hours. While the agents may have started out fully geared up (within regs at the time), when the ball opened, the gear was in the rear of the cars.

There was more than one agent with a gun on the seat-those disappeared in the multi vehicle crash.
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I always felt that the agents involved really didn't think they would come in contact with Platt and Mattix that day. If YOU knew you were going to be in a gunfight, wouldn't you be wearing a vest and carrying more than one pistol?

The FBI agents may have had inferior weaponry, but almost all LEOs in those days carried S&W six shot revolvers. With all due respect, I believe their tactics sucked. Platt/Mattix knew they were being tailed and confirmed it by making four right turns. The bad guys seized the initiative and the good guys paid for it.

Sounds like Newhall repeated, doesn't it?

The rules are written in blood.
 
I have more than a little bit of knowledge regarding the incident, and the problems began when the special agents, even though they knew for whom they were searching and where they might find them, were NOT prepared tactically or mentally for the confrontation..

The real problems began when they initated a "felony car stop" by ramming the bad guys' vehicle.

The only positives that resulted were that Platt and Mattix were killed, and the lessons learned from the errors committed have helped many, many other LEO's.

Be safe.
 
I started a thread about this last week. I'm out of words at this point. Yes they made mistakes but for goodness sakes every organization makes mistakes. We had a big azz blunder here at my shop the other day. And, last, they didn't exactly have an appointment with these guys, they were cruising the area and just happened to see the Monte Carlo..it probably just happened quicker than they could react to properly.
 
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