I had something else planned but, given events, I thought it would be useful to bring Henry Virkula to your attention.
LIQUOR GUARDS KILL A MINNESOTA MAN; Merchant Was Driving Home With Family in Automobile Near the International Border. [NYT June 1929]
INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn., June 2.—Henry Virkula, a 41- year-old merchant of Big Falls, Minn., was shot and killed by border patrolmen near here last night while riding home in an automobile with his wife and two children.
The merchant failed to stop, at the command of the patrolmen, who were assigned to liquor smuggling duty.
Virkula, a family man and well-known community leader, had taken his wife Selma and children, Bernice Elaine (8) and Marice Alice (10) on a jaunt. They were to spend a week on holiday in a cottage at Lake Kabetocama in Canada. The Virkulas headed up in their Packard tourer to see the place and make final arrangements. This was an age before phone lines, never mind the internet; arrangements of this kind had to be done face to face, and the Virkulas decided to make a virtue of a necessity. They returned home because Selma had a ton of laundry to do before they started their vacation.
They were on their way home when the Customs agents, E. J. White and E. V. Servine, intercepted Virkula's vehicle. It was a lonely road; a nearby farm was the closest habitation, and the farmer became witness to the shooting.
The agents challenged Virkula shortly before midnight, while his daughters were asleep in the back of the car. The stop took place close to the Canadian border, at Little Fork, near a spot where liquor smugglers were known to cross into the United States. It was about 15 miles south of the border.
When Virkula failed to stop immediately on being challenged, the agents opened fire. They used shotguns. Servine shot to incapacitate the car, while White aimed higher. Virkula's car was peppered with shot, and one of White's rounds took the back of Virkula's head off.
According to Virkula's wife, the car travelled less than a car length between the time of the challenge and the first shot being fired.
Emmet J. White was a little over a month on the job at the time of the shooting, having joined the service on 1 May. He went to trial for the killing a year later, in February 1930.
THERE was nothing in the least facetious or insincere in the prophecies that have appeared in these pages [the Houston Gargoyle] more than once to the effect that the attempt to impose upon a free people such an unpopular and unwise law as Prohibition, especially in its Volsteadian form, might eventually result in armed rebellion, and it would not require many more "incidents" of the kind we are talking about to prove us correct. Let a few more Virkulas be slain in such cowardly and unjust fashion, particularly if on the next occasions a miracle does not save the wives and children, and consider the possible consequences. Angry reprisals by the citizens of the affected community are countered by the government with an attempt to seize and punish those who had taken vengeance on its officers, and that in turn results in an even greater flare-up of popular indignation against "oppression" It might be necessary to send troops to quell the disturbance, when the disturbance might spread, bringing neighboring communities to the aid of the original one, until the startling picture might confront us of an entire state up in arms against the federal government.
Accounts vary as to what White said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. At trial, it was alleged that he said to Virkula's wife, 'Don't cry, lady; I didn't mean to do that.' Other versions include 'I have a wife and children and it makes me feel bad' and 'I done my duty.'
Virkula's wife Selma testified that Virkula was hard of hearing and didn't have his glasses on when the agents challenged him.
White was acquitted of the killing.
The Atlanta Constitution has a portion of the testimony given by White's partner Servine, as follows:
The officers had received orders to shoot at cars that failed to stop at their command.
Q. Are these orders printed?
A. I don't know.
Q. Where did you get your orders?
A. I never received them. Other Patrolmen Got Verbal Orders.
Q. The firing of a gun at an automobile is a matter assumed by the patrolmen themselves?
A. The other patrolmen have received these verbal orders.
Q. Would you give an instance?
A. Both the new men, White and Ammerman, have received them,
Q. From whom?
A. Deputy Collector of Customs N. A. Linderberg.
Q. Have you ever carried a gun in connection with your patrol work?
A. Yes.
Q. Would it be your opinion that in cases similar to this you would be justified in shooting at the car?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you trained in the use of firearms in connection with your work?
A. One of the regulations of the service is that men shall have six months' experience in a combat unit of the army or experience in police work, or as a sheriff, Texas Rangers, or State Constabulary of Pennsylvania.
Q. Are the officers of your department instructed relative to methods of shooting. at a car?
A. Yes.
Q. What are the general instructions given you?
A. A car refusing to stop when the signal is given, we are to shoot with an effort to dismantle the car, the tires, gas tank, or radiator, We are authorized to shoot to injure a person in case he is attempting to injure us, if we assume he is trying to injure us.
Q. Was any injury attempted by Virkkula?
A. Well, he attempted to run over us, at least I interpret it that way.
I did a quick Google for Emmet White, Minnesota and found this photograph. I do not know if it is the same Emmet White. Judging by the photo White was working for Ewart's Golden Guernsey, a popular Minnesota dairy. Judging by the comments he did so for most of his adult life.
The Prohibition Bureau received little, if any, firearms training. It was assumed that those brought on board already had sufficient knowledge of firearms to be issued armament.
It was the first Federal agency to ever carry guns and have arrest powers, as well as the power to search and seize. The FBI - then known as the Bureau of Investigation, and the senior service by twelve years - did not initially have arrest powers. Their role was to Investigate, not police. Nor was there a standard armament policy. BOI agents appear to have been allowed to use their own judgement when it came to weapons. Until 1934, when the BOI adopted its official policy. It's been said that this was a deliberate strategy by J. Edgar Hoover, to avoid any public comparison between his BOI and the Prohibition Bureau.
The Prohibition Bureau's weakness for gunplay became its besetting sin. It was known as a shoot first and ask questions later agency. According to historian John Kobler the Bureau admitted to killing 137 persons but were probably responsible for well over a thousand deaths, and the total does not include those wounded or otherwise injured as nobody at the time bothered to keep count.
After Prohibition's end the Bureau became the genesis for what is now the ATF. It's my understanding that no official record of the Bureau's activity exists, and that the Bureau's records were ordered destroyed a little over a decade after the end of Prohibition.
Speaking as someone with an interest in history, I've often wondered why nobody's ever tried to write a history of the Bureau. The closest we have is a book published in 1929, which I've read, but nothing subsequent to that. Nor, to my knowledge, has any historian explored the career of Wayne Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League, which is remarkable given the influence it had over the government and presidency of the United States. It literally drove the United States government to adopt and keep a policy which was incredibly unpopular and, despite all evidence of its failure, kept the experiment going for over a decade.
Over a decade of federal bloodshed.
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