1986 FBI Miami Shootout?

[XD-40 Shooter]

The FBI agents should have A) had AR-15's or a Mini-14 of their own and deployed it right away, or B) deployed their shotguns right away, instead of relying on their pistols, big mistake. From what I read, their was at least one shotgun available with an 8 round capacity. That could lay down some pretty effective suppressive fire, or a few direct hits probably would have ended the fight.

 

[Walkalong]

The police need more firepower available to them. Some do, but some don't. We should never have police in the situation where they need to go to a gun store to pick up items to fight criminals.

 

[OpFlash]

Firefights are crapshoots. The round in question went through the perp's arm first before entering his body. The ever changing random nature of positioning and lineup of all the varied substances that makeup the human body during an encounter makes the claim that a different caliber would have performed better almost meaningless, at least among the top three service calibers (9, 40, and 45). I'm sure there are cases where the EXTRA energy of 40 over 9mm would have made the 40 miss the heart and the 9mm nail it. There is not enough difference between the three to matter given the random and changing placement of bone and tissue.

The FBI needed a scapegoat and they chose the 9mm.

 

[NASCAR_MAN]

I think these agents were simply outclassed and, most of all, it was thier hubris - and not thier available firepower - that cost them. These agents could have just as easily used 12 guages and made quick work of the Bad Guys after a more careful approach.

Neverhtless, what is simple (use good judgement) will be forgotten and the blame for the affair laid on the caliber - and this will continue to needlessly confuse the gun-owning public for years to come.

 

[ilbob]

One of the problems with trying to make any kind of sense out of the caliber wars is that there is little in the way of consistent information available to independent researchers. Much of it is based on incomplete and/or anecdotal evidence, and second and third hand information.

 

[ilbob]

I think these agents were simply outclassed and, most of all, it was thier hubris - and not thier available firepower - that cost them. These agents could have just as easily used 12 guages and made quick work of the Bad Guys after a more careful approach.

I think a lot of people were just shocked that the FBI did so poorly in a real gun fight. Their PR had always made them seem invincible.

IMO, this is an object lesson in why you should not believe your own BS. It may well get you killed.

 

[PeteRR]

The Melvin Purvis-era FBI was better equipped to fight bank robbery crews. A Thompson SMG could have been put to good use in this case.

The Texas Rangers that got Bonnie and Clyde used BAR's.

 

[perpster]

Guess they should have broke out them "Old Fashioned" .357 wheel guns. HMMM.

IIRC, the gunfight finally ended when Moralez (sp) used a 5-shot Chief revolver to kill Platt at less than 7 yds.

 

[.cheese.]

just as an aside.... my aunt told me the other day something she never told me before.

SHE DROVE THROUGH THE 1986 FBI SHOOTING AS IT WAS HAPPENING!

She thought that a movie was being filmed, but she couldn't figure out where the cameramen were.

I should mention she lives in California and all of her neighbors are movie stars, so I guess that helps explain that mentality.

She didn't realize it was real until later after she was home.

I'm sure the look on my face when she told me this a week or two ago was priceless.

 

[Geronimo45]

Guess they should have broke out them "Old Fashioned" .357 wheel guns. HMMM.

They did. Those .357s were loaded with .38s.
Summary from another thread:
#1: Police want to stop Matix and Platt, and somehow manage to run them off the road and into a tree. Shots exchanged, Matix takes several rounds, police took rounds. Matix is knocked out temporarily by the shots.

#2: Few more shots, Platt advances. Kills two. Gets in police car. More shots fired. Matix crawls up.

#3: Mireles gets to his feet and walks/runs up to car window - shooting while doing so (apparently). Lands final hits on BGs.

A lot of lead flying here, a lot of wounds on both sides. At stage 2, Platt advances and kills two. At 3, he's ceased his advancing (he needed a vehicle, the officers were in his way) and Mireles is on the move. Aggression seems to win out here, not caliber, not capacity, not ballistics.

 

[obiwan1]

Poor tactics, poorer execution and bad marksmanship. A different bullet wouldn't have made much difference.

 

[dodging230grainers]

As an interesting note, the entire shootout was in fact ended promptly with .38 Special 158gr SWCJHPs. The 'lowly' .38 smith and wesson snub finished the task that semi-auto 9mms and 12 gauge shotguns did not. (of course, the tactics of most of the agents involved were poor at best)

As I recall, Miereles emptied the snub into the car; Platt was shot twice in the head, and Matix took the other 3 in the upper torso/neck area. Both died rather quickly.

 

[shield20]

I believe that if the round that Dove used to make that awesome shot had penetrated 2" more then the outcome would have been different. Whether it was a 40 or a 45 or even a different 9mm, a round designed to penetrate deeper then the ST he used, IF it did nothing else different other then penetrate deeper, would have killed Platt in 10-15 seconds.

 

[NASCAR_MAN]

So, a .38 Special finished the job. Well, at least we know the bad guys weren't Moro Warriors: I hear a 38 will just bounce right off a Moro Warrior and just make him meaner (and the 30-40 rifle cartridge really makes them furious).

 

[evan price]

The biggest problem was the fact that the agents lost control and physical possession of their guns after the vehicle collision of the traffic stop. Also they had not trained enough about tactical reloading and honestly from the trascripts of the radio traffic, they didn't seem to take the whole thing seriously and got outgunned by men who were prepared for deadly violence at the drop of a hat.

 

[sturmgewehr]

The silver tip of the day was well known to expand way too fast and to stop too quickly. Had the agents been issued ball rounds the outcome would have been different.

Hollowpoint ammo technology has improved 10 fold since 1986. Check out the penetration in the illustration above. Today things might have played out differently.

 

[Houston Tom]

Like most situations of that kind there are many factors that contribute to the final outcome.
Could a larger caliber pistol help the agents? I believe so but maybe not. But that was only one piece of that puzzle.

1 The tactics they used on the rolling stop,

2 The lack of preparation, they were trying to stop a group know to use rifles and they did not have a single rifle just a shotgun and a couple of MP 5s (locked on the trunk) and pistol rated body armor that most did not wear.

3 The mindset/training also played a big role. The BG’s were prior military (MPs) and it could be argued that they or at least the one that did all the damage was better prepared for the fight. Remember only on of the BGs was responsible for all the damage inflicted on the agents and that was inflicted after he had been hit once.

The main culprit I see was hubris, they under estimated their target, and over estimated their own abilities with the tools they had.

 

[BigG]

The Melvin Purvis-era FBI was better equipped to fight bank robbery crews.

Well, in those days guys like Purvis or Jelly Bryce would shoot first and ask questions later, with pretty good assurance J Edgar would cover for them, whereas the guys in the 1986 fracas were only indoctrinated with the old politically correct stuff that makes personnel managers happy and employees afraid to take initiative. The decision to make the felony stop was a bad one; the inability to bring effective firepower on the stoppees was the second bad decision.

 

[30 cal slob]

what is the penetration of .223 ball ammo exiting the muzzle of an AR-15 style pistol? hitting a target say, 25 yards away?

 

[BuntlineSpecial]

The '96 Miami Shootout was a collision of tactics.
The FBI used the tactic that had always worked for them before, run the car off the road in a "felony car stop", run up with pistols and take the bad guy into custody. All the cars had "bullet proof" vests and shotguns, but few were used. It was hot that day and none of the agents, on what they thought was a simple surveilance, were not wearing them (for comfort). They were all experienced agents with the best gear they were allowed at the time.
Platt and Maddox were both former Army airborne MP's. Platt had no problem shooting people, it could be said he liked it. Platt and Maddox bailed out shooting (admittedly Platt more than Maddox), quickly gained fire superiority, and never surrendered it. I think the FBI report at the time said Platt fired a minimum of 140 rounds.
When the shooting started, a lot of things went wrong for the FBI, some agents lost their weapons (revolvers), only one (or maybe two) agents had the time to secure their armor, Ben Grogan, the best shot they had, lost his glasses and was effectively blind, the heavy guns, the M-16's were absent from the scene - those agents were too far away to get to the shootout. Platt bailed out of the car firing, using his training to good effect, firing accurately and firing to keep the agents heads down as he, and Maddox, moved.
The question of what if the agents had "X", while a lot of fun, is somewhat acedemic. I would love to say that if everybody had a .45, things would be different. But Dove and Reisner ran their S&W 9mm's (14 shots +1) empty at least once in the shootout, with a .45 (7 or 8 +1) that just amounts to about twice as many mag changes, and the "allowed" load for most LEO's is two mags. Basically, I think the agents would have run their .45's dry. Mirales finished both bad guys with a .357 loaded with +P .38's (with considerable help from a 12-gauge 870),so horray for old-tech.
To sum up, I think the Dade county coroner had it best when he said of the incident (paraphrasing) 'the motivated individuals with rifles, siezing the advantage, will almost always prevail".
Or, as Cooper said it. "A handgun is a great weapon to use to fight your way to a rifle."
Off my soap box now. God bless our fallen heroes, Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove. And, folks, lets go easy on Mas Ayoob, please?

 

[Nhsport]

Whenever one studies such incidents it is very easy to fall into the what if mode, but reality is not that simple.
Much (almost everything actually) went very wrong that day but one thing that went very right was LE useing these mistakes to learn and try to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
I was however stunned (and I am no expert) that the FBI over-reacted and went to the 10mm . As they themselves fairly quickly admitted it was more power than the average agent could handle.
Much of LE work (and life itself) is a string of compromises, always trying to ballance cost vs. results. This applies to training time,equipment,personal , and so forth.
To answer the OPs question it has been shown that the average LE type , even the best trained (I would put FBI in this group) generally don't do best with any caliber much heavier than 9/40 .
Bottom line for those poor guys in miami is that circunstances put them at a huge disadvantage. Any pistol against a trained couple of guys with centerfire rifles is a very bad place to be

 

[mbt2001]

The Silvertip is an excellent round. It did what it was supposed to do. It went in through the right arm, out the right arm, traveled the 5 or 6" inches of intervening space entered the chest cavity and penetrated 1" away from the heart (which is on the left side, so it went through the arm, through most of the chest cavity and stopped very close to the heart inflicting heavy damage on the way). Off of this one shot, the FBI and others have made some erroneous judgments.

The tactics of the FBI officers are to blame for what happened. It is that simple. The silvertip functioned effectively. Had they put their rounds on target and executed effective team tactics, it would not have mattered if they had a .25, they would have won the day. Blaming the calibers and the bullets is what bureaucracies due to shift the blame from their tactics and training.

That is like saying that if the police cars were faster, the crooks would never get away...

Sheriff Jim Wilson said once that the latest and greatest toys do not win gun fights, fast center mass hits do. Nough said.

 

[GEM]

The 38 that was ineffective on the Moros wasn't a 38 SPL anyway. That round was developed later in response to such IIRC.

Also, none of the handguns replacing that 38 did much better.

 

[RoadkingLarry]

Nuke 'em from high orbit, it's the only way to be sure!

 

[OH25shooter]

I was working the street at that time and we were required to view footage film and the re-enactment (using actors) of events during in-service training. And as other members have noticed, I agree the initial "major mistake" was:

The FBI didn't do the traffic stop right and they underestimated there adversary which led to tragic events for many of them. The bad guys were trained and went into the FF knowing there adversary. The FBI was majorly under gunned.

But, unfortunately the FBI rarely notifies the local PD of a surveillance felony stop. However, that my have changed.