Were Dallas Police officers involved in the murder of President Kennedy ?

[Gil Jesus]

BLUE DEATH :
Were Dallas Police officers involved in the murder of President Kennedy ?
By Gil Jesus (2021)
(Author's Note: This is newer version of an old post of mine from 2007 )

 

There are many reasons to suspect that the Dallas Police were in some way involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Not only were they responsible for the safety of the President, they were responsible for collecting and processing the evidence from the scene of the murder. They were also responsible for the safety of the accused assassin.
When it was over, the President was dead, his assassin was dead and there remained questions regarding the evidence to this day, almost 60 years later that have not been answered.
Could any major metropolitan law enforcement agency have been so inept, so careless and so unprofessional as to allow this tragedy of errors to occur, or was this a well-planned plot to remove suspicion from those responsible and direct it to a "patsy" who would never see his day in court ?

Power on the Right
Of all people, General Edwin Walker may have given us a clue to who was responsible for the mysterious deaths of witnesses after the assassination, when he told the Warren Commission, "You can anticipate that there are people that would like to shut up anybody who knows anything about this case. People right here in Dallas." (0)
 

Who would know what witnesses had information that needed to be kept under wraps ?  Where they lived or their contact info ?
The ones who took their statements and filed the reports.
 

Membership in right-wing organizations such as the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan was a prerequisite for acceptance on the Dallas Police force. Jack Ruby hinted at right-wing involvement by attempting to direct Earl Warren towards the JBS. (1) Had the Commission looked at the JBS in Dallas, it would have led to, among others, General Walker, H.L.Hunt and members of the Dallas police. Ruby was also fearful to speak in Dallas. 
 

Consider this: The only ones Ruby wasn't safe from while he was in jail were the cops.
 

A Dallas County Deputy Sheriff named Hiram Ingram stated that he had knowledge of a police conspiracy. He fell and broke his hip on April 1, 1968 and died of cancer three days later. (2)
 

The Dallas police controlled security along the motorcade route, the manpower allotments, the crime scenes, the evidence, the media, the interrogation of the suspect, the release of all other suspects, the custody and safety of the prisoner, the prisoner's immediate family and all phases of the preliminary investigation.
To say they did a poor job is a gross understatement.

Motorcade Security
In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Roy Kellerman, the agent on the White House detail who was the on-the-scene agent in charge of the Dallas trip, indicated the motorcade route was in the hands of Secret Service advance agent Winston Lawson and the Dallas Police. (3)
 

Dallas Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels told the WC that the police officials agreed that the route taken was the best. (4) Chief Curry drove Sorrels and Lawson through the motorcade route up to Main and Houston then pointed and said that the highway was "over there."
Because a large number of Dallas police who were on vacation or had the day off refused to work security for the President's visit, the police were forced to use reserve officers. The captain of the Dallas police reserves, Charles Arnett, told the Warren Commission, " if there was a threat of bodily harm (to the President), they (the reserves) were to report their concerns to the nearest "regular officer". (5) So if a reserve officer saw someone pull a pistol and point it at President Kennedy, he was under orders to run a couple of blocks and return with a regular officer.
 

This was Dallas' idea of "maximum protection" for the President. Vacations and days off were not cancelled. Officers whose normal day off was that Friday refused to work overtime and thus kept their day off. For example, in the Homicide Division alone, 60% of the detectives were not available to work on the day of the assassination.
 

This in the city that had roughed up Adlai Stevenson just a month before. (6) As a result of this burden, Chief Curry took to the airwaves to warn the citizens to be on their best behavior.
 

There was only "token" police protection along the motorcade route. There were 178 officers, including reserves, on the parade route for an estimated 250,000 people. That boils down to one officer for every 1,404 potential assailants. In addition, none of the officers either in the motorcade or on its route, were ever told to be concerned about the estimated 20,000 open windows along the motorcade route. (7)
 

On November 20th, two Dallas officers saw "mock target practice" going on at the picket fence atop the grassy knoll. They arrived in time to see the participants depart in haste and only wrote a report on the matter AFTER November 22nd. The report was buried by the FBI and only came to light after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. (8)
 

Marion Baker had been assigned to ride alongside the Presidential limousine, but was told by his sergeant five or ten minutes before leaving Love Field that no officers would be riding alongside the President's car. (9) Officer Bobby Hargis confirmed that "we were supposed to be beside the car". (10)

Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry told the Warren Commission that Secret Service agent Winston Lawson cut the number of motorcycles from four on each side of the President's limousine to two on each side, then moved them back. (11) His testimony was supported by Captain Perdue W. Lawrence.(12)
 

Officer Billy Joe Martin told the Commission that "they (Secret Service) instructed us that they didn't want anyone riding past the President's car and that we were to ride to the rear, to the rear of his car, about the rear bumper. (13)
 

According to Martin, "they told us at Love Field right after Kennedy's plane landed...Well, while Kennedy was busy shaking hands with all the well-wishers at the airport, Johnson's Secret Service people came over to the motorcycle cops and gave us a bunch of instructions...They also ordered us into the damnedest escort formation I've ever seen. Ordinarily, you bracket the car with four motorcycles, one on each fender. But this time, they told the four of us assigned to the President's car there'd be no forward escorts. We were to stay well to the back and not let ourselves get ahead of the car's rear wheels under any circumstances. I'd never heard of a formation like that, much less ridden in one, but they said they wanted to let the crowds have an unrestricted view of the president. Well, I guess somebody got an 'unrestricted view' of him, all right." (14) Martin claimed that some of those instructions were that the four Presidential motorcycle officers were ordered that "under no circumstances were they to leave their positions regardless of what happened." (15)
 

The re-deployment of the motorcycle escort to the rear of the rear wheels not only gave "everyone" an unrestricted view of the President, it made it easier for anybody to throw anything from an egg to a bomb at him. In a hostile city as Dallas, to configure the motorcade in the way it was done was more than incompetent.
 

It was criminal.
 

The redeployment of the motorcycle escort left Kennedy unprotected from the front and from the side. It allowed those close enough to him, the people on the curbs, to have an unrestricted and unobstructed opportunity to cause him physical harm.
 

And although the Dallas police claimed that Lawson told them on the evening of the 21st that Kennedy didn't want any motorcycles alongside his car, Lawson was forced to admit under oath that he never heard Kennedy give that order. (16)
 

The last-minute stripping of the President's protection by Lawson on the evening before his arrival is at the least, disturbing.
 

It suggests that Lawson knew beforehand that shots were going to be fired and as a result, removed the police officers from the line of fire. He also removed the military man from the front seat of the limo on the morning of the assassination.
 

The "man with the football", the nuclear codes, was removed from the front seat of the limo where he usually sat between the Secret Service agents and placed in a car further back in the motorcade, presumably to get him out of the line of fire.
 

In Tampa, agents rode on the back of the limo despite the President's alleged aversion to having them there.
 

In Dallas there were no agents on the rear of the car except for agent Clinton Hill, who got on and off of the rear bumper four times during the motorcade. If any of the agents in the White House detail believed that JFK didn't want anyone on the back bumper, they never told Agent Hill.

 

The Press Vehicles
Usually the President's motorcades were filmed from the front by cameramen riding on a flat bed truck in front of the President's limousine. Not in Dallas. In the "Big D" those were convertibles they were riding in and they were six or seven cars in BACK of the President. The remainder of the Press rode in two Busses at the END of the motorcade! The entire configuration of the motorcade was changed on the morning of the 22nd.

Police Deficiencies
Julia Ann Mercer gave a deposition claiming to have seen a rifle being unloaded from a truck at the base of the knoll on Elm St. on the morning of the assassination. In that deposition, she said that "there were three policemen standing talking near a motorcycle on the bridge just west of me" when the rifle was unloaded. (17)
 

Dallas officers disregarded any orders to keep the overpasses clear. Sheriff Bill Decker ordered his men not to participate in the protection of the motorcade. Decker also displayed an unwillingness to transfer Oswald. (18)
 

In a letter to Jean Hill, "JB" wrote:
"I get the distinct feeling that the feds think somebody in the Dallas Police had something to do with the hit on Kennedy....so many Dallas cops knew Jack Ruby, the fact that somebody let him in to the basement right before he shot Oswald, the fact that some of the cops were heard cussing Kennedy for being a flaky liberal." (19)
 

Certain witnesses were totally ignored. They didn't seal off the building right away (20) and as a result, some people who were in the building at the time of the shooting were allowed to leave. When they did finally seal off the building, those still inside were escorted to the County Records Building to give their statements in the office of the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. When this happened, the police had the building to themselves with only Roy Truly present.
( Note: this is when I believe the "gunsack" was made by police )
 

No impediments were placed in the way of fleeing assassins and although they claimed to have known that Oswald ( by name ) was missing from the Texas School Book Depository Building, no-all-points-bulletin was ever broadcast for him.
 

Evidence was faked, altered or suppressed. 
 

Police officers perjured themselves in testimony.
 

Ridiculously biased lineups were held at which witnesses, after seeing Oswald's picture on TV and in the newspapers were asked to identify him standing alongside police detectives, a police clerk, teenagers and an overweight Mexican. 
 

Photographic evidence and video evidence taken by witnesses was seized, never to be seen again.
 

At Parkland Hospital, the police tried to enforce Texas criminal law that required the autopsy to be done by the civilian medical examiner of Dallas County, Dr. Earl Rose. There was shouting and shoving and in the end, they were forced to yield at gunpoint to the Secret Service and forfeited custody of the body to them. Was there a struggle for possession of the body because that was the law, or were there bullets in that body that both sides wanted ?
 

In recent years, evidence has surfaced that the Dallas Police may have been involved in the assassination, if not directly, then at least as an enabler.
There's the whole "badgeman" thing, the discovery by Gary Mack and Jack White of a figure in the Moorman photo of a man in a police uniform firing from behind the picket fence.  And the claim of Al Navis that Lee Bowers once wrote him a letter saying that he saw a Dallas Policeman fire a rifle from the behind the picket fence. And then there's the account of Gordon Arnold and his encounter with a Dallas policeman who had dirty hands on the Grassy Knoll when no policeman was officially there. Whether these were actual policemen or killers dressed up as policemen, no one really knows.
It was never investigated.
 

And while there was a killer on the loose where was the Police Chief ?
While his men wrestled an alleged cop-killer in the Texas Theater, Chief Jesse Curry drove Lyndon Johnson to the airport, then stayed on board Air Force 1 for a photo-op during the swearing-in ceremony.

That's some great leadership.
 

And despite telephone threats against the life of Oswald, the Dallas police took no supplemental precautions to ensure his safety. 
Once wounded, the hospital personnel administered no anesthesia to Oswald.

NOTES
(0) 11H 417, 419
(1) 5H 198; Marrs, Crossfire, p.1
(2) Penn Jones, Forgive My Grief III, p. 15
(3) 2H 111
(4) 7H 338
(5) 12H 132
(6) 24H 259
(7) King ex. 4, 20H454
(8) cited in Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pp. 175-176
(9) 3H 244
(10) Mark Oakes interview with Hargis 6-26-95
(11) 4H 171
(12) 7H 580-581
(13) 6H 293
(14) Jean Hill, Last Dissenting Witness, pp 112-114
(15) Newcomb & Adams, Murder from Within, P.33
(16) 4H 338
(17) 19H 483
(18) 9H 530
(19) Sloan and Hill, Last Dissenting Witness, p.75
(20) 23H 847, 916

Edited July 30, 2021 by Gil Jesus

[Ron Bulman]

This is great Gill.  I don't think I've ever seen all this on the DPD put together this way in one place.  There's even more questionable information in some of their Warren Commission statements and testimony if I remember right.  It's been a while since since I've read any of them so I offer no specifics.  I do remember one officer refusing or failing  lie detector test.  Maybe a (Patrick?) Dean?  Another demanding a WC lawyer who questioned him take back a statement implying the officer lied.

That part about the Presidents alleged aversion to having them there (SSA's on the back of the car) has been pretty well destroyed by Vince Palamara.  

I've never read about the claim of Al Navis letter from Lee Bowers saying he'd seen a officer shooting behind the fence on the knoll.  Who was Navis?  A friend of Bowers?

[Guest]

Bloody awesome post. Very compelling.

Thanks for sharing. 👏🏼

[Gil Jesus]

44 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

This is great Gill.  I don't think I've ever seen all this on the DPD put together this way in one place.  There's even more questionable information in some of their Warren Commission statements and testimony if I remember right.  It's been a while since since I've read any of them so I offer no specifics.  I do remember one officer refusing or failing  lie detector test.  Maybe a (Patrick?) Dean?  Another demanding a WC lawyer who questioned him take back a statement implying the officer lied.

That part about the Presidents alleged aversion to having them there (SSA's on the back of the car) has been pretty well destroyed by Vince Palamara.  

I've never read about the claim of Al Navis letter from Lee Bowers saying he'd seen a officer shooting behind the fence on the knoll.  Who was Navis?  A friend of Bowers?

Navis was a bookstore owner who specialized in JFK assassination books. He claimed to have struck up a friendship with Lee Bowers before Bowers died. He also claimed to have received a letter from Bowers in which Bowers claimed to have seen a Dallas Policeman fire from behind the picket fence. When pressed to produce this letter, however, Navis could not. So his claim was pooh-poohed as just another publicity stunt.

[Paul Brancato]

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a police officer shooting from behind the picket fence, and my bet it that it was Tippit. It’s the best explanation for his movements afterwards, and for his death. 

[Steve Thomas]

I wrote a small piece on the local Secret Service back in November and asked,

"Why did the local Secret Service tell the Dallas Police, Military Intelligence and the County Sheriff's Department that they weren't needed? Was it hubris, or was it something more sinister?"

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26793-local-secret-service/?tab=comments#comment-432453

Steve Thomas

[Norman T. Field]

12 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a police officer shooting from behind the picket fence, and my bet it that it was Tippit. It’s the best explanation for his movements afterwards, and for his death. 

+1.

[Adam Johnson]

Nice presentation Gil,

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, individual's within in the DPD of 1963 aided in the assassination on a passive participation level (that being they did little to prevent the act) important DPD officials conducted terrible evidence collection and processing, poor witness interrogation, record collection and preservation, whilst several officers took part in intimidation of assassination witnesses post event for many years.

I would like to hear from the forum's J.D. Tippit expert Joseph McBride on a not so simple question.

From your research Mr. McBride do you think it was possible for officer Tippit to be patrolling his assigned zone prior to 12:00-12:10pm on November 22nd then drive into Dealey Plaza, take up a position behind the picket fence by 12:20-12:25pm fire one shot at 12:30pm stay behind the picket fence area for 5 to 10 minutes pretending to search/crowd control the railway yard parking area, then drive over to the Gloco fuel station by the time he was reported parked up there?

Your book confirms J.D was an excellent shot with a rifle, his actions post assassination are peculiar and frantic to say the least and become incredibly suspicious due to his shooting death and the location that shooting takes place. Maybe J.D. Tippit realy is the assassinations "Rosetta stone". My problem is in 60 years no conclusive evidence/witness identification puts Tippit behind the picket fence or in touch with any known major players thought possible of being behind the assassination. 

Someone like J.D.Tippit definitely looks susceptible to manipulation by someone posing as an authority figure (SS/CIA/Military).

Regards,

AJ

[Gil Jesus]

38 minutes ago, Adam Johnson said:

Nice presentation Gil,

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, individual's within in the DPD of 1963 aided in the assassination on a passive participation level (that being they did little to prevent the act) important DPD officials conducted terrible evidence collection and processing, poor witness interrogation, record collection and preservation, whilst several officers took part in intimidation of assassination witnesses post event for many years.

 

And this is the key to Oswald's innocence: if Oswald was guilty, why would they have to go to such extremes to try to prove him guilty ?

Like lineups where he was the only choice. Really ? A lineup with a Mexican ? Which one of the Tippit witnesses described his killer as a Mexican ? Which one described his killer as a teenager ? Which one described him as wearing a vest ? Or having blond hair ? How can anybody buy these BS lineups ? It's amazing how gullible some people are.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Gil Jesus

[Joe Bauer]

On 7/30/2021 at 5:55 PM, Paul Brancato said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a police officer shooting from behind the picket fence, and my bet it that it was Tippit. It’s the best explanation for his movements afterwards, and for his death. 

Tippit? Or Roscoe White?

[Norman T. Field]

Both, IMHO. 

[Pete Mellor]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Tippit? Or Roscoe White?

Joe, do we know the truth of where the quote of J.D.'s came from to his son on the morning of the 22nd, ""No matter what happens today, I want you to know that I love you "

Or is that some later invention?

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Joe, do we know the truth of where the quote of J.D.'s came from to his son on the morning of the 22nd, ""No matter what happens today, I want you to know that I love you "

Or is that some later invention?

Never heard that one. Maybe Joseph McBride knows ….

 

[Paul Brancato]

8 hours ago, Adam Johnson said:

Nice presentation Gil,

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, individual's within in the DPD of 1963 aided in the assassination on a passive participation level (that being they did little to prevent the act) important DPD officials conducted terrible evidence collection and processing, poor witness interrogation, record collection and preservation, whilst several officers took part in intimidation of assassination witnesses post event for many years.

I would like to hear from the forum's J.D. Tippit expert Joseph McBride on a not so simple question.

From your research Mr. McBride do you think it was possible for officer Tippit to be patrolling his assigned zone prior to 12:00-12:10pm on November 22nd then drive into Dealey Plaza, take up a position behind the picket fence by 12:20-12:25pm fire one shot at 12:30pm stay behind the picket fence area for 5 to 10 minutes pretending to search/crowd control the railway yard parking area, then drive over to the Gloco fuel station by the time he was reported parked up there?

Your book confirms J.D was an excellent shot with a rifle, his actions post assassination are peculiar and frantic to say the least and become incredibly suspicious due to his shooting death and the location that shooting takes place. Maybe J.D. Tippit realy is the assassinations "Rosetta stone". My problem is in 60 years no conclusive evidence/witness identification puts Tippit behind the picket fence or in touch with any known major players thought possible of being behind the assassination. 

Someone like J.D.Tippit definitely looks susceptible to manipulation by someone posing as an authority figure (SS/CIA/Military).

Regards,

AJ

Adam - I’m not Joseph McBride but when I read his book I tried to calculate this, and in my opinion he had time, though 10 minutes of hanging around seems too long. The fuel station was I believe less than a mile away.  I also determined that his alibi was full of holes. I wish Joseph would weigh in here. The best explanation for Tippit’s death is for me that he was expendable, and dangerous to leave alive. Dead men tell no tales. 

[Joseph McBride]

These are complicated issues I discuss at length in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, so I refer the reader there for the accounts. Marie

Tippit's account of the supposed lunch changed a lot in various interviews, so it is dubious. I interviewed a neighbor

who claimed to have seen J. D. there, but with my questions I was able to disprove her story as mistaken. The Tippit

home was quite a distance from downtown. The Gloco station near the viaduct was a relatively

short trip from downtown, about a five-minute trip without heavy traffic. Tippit was out of his district when he was killed. Tippit's father

told me what Officer Mentzel (the officer assigned to that district) told Marie about

how they were hunting down Oswald from shortly after the assassination, which means

they were in on the plot at least as accessories after the fact. The DPD claimed it did not know Oswald's identity until he

was taken to the police station shortly after 2 p.m., but they knew it when they ordered

Tippit and Mentzel to track him down, i.e., by 12:45 p.m. The DPD had been keeping

tabs on Oswald for some time before the assassination, and he was an FBI informant

on the plot against Kennedy, not realizing until too late that he was being set up as its patsy. What J. D. allegedly said to his son Allan that morning cannot be verified;

Allan later denied the story.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Joseph McBride