SIGNED BULLETS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 58, 10 March 1937, Page 5

SIGNED BULLETS

Bank bandits, burglars, stick-up, men, and other malefactors who in the future may have fatal gunplay contact with Santa Barbara police may die assured that there will be no dispute over who shot them. There will be no possibility of their being recorded as suicides if in truth they have not turned their own weapons on themselves, says the "New York Times." In .the .future every trigger pulled by. Channel City detectives or patrolmen will throw a monogrammed bullet and the'monogram thereon will be found registered at headquarters in City. Hall. Recently Harry Butler, a resident of Santa Barbara, was killed outside a Pasadena bank when he tried to shoot it out with officers. An autopsy surgeon ruled that he died a suicide, only to have a Coroner's jury return a verdict that a bullet from a police gun killed him. Police Chief Garrity has now completed an identifying census of every gun in the department. Shots were fired into a barrel stuffed with cotton and old clothes. Each bullet bore a slightly different marking, as did the firing pin and the cartridge. All these differences were recorded and the fired bullets filed for references. With these records any bullet recovered from the body of a bandit can be readily identified and due credit given.