My Favorite 1960s Dragnet #10: The Shooting Board
This is another episode that broke new ground. As interesting as it was to see Joe Friday acting as defense counsel for an accused police officer, “The Shooting Board” is even more fascinating as Friday himself is the subject of a police investigation after a fatal shootout in a laundromat with a known criminal.
This was yet another episode of Dragnet/Adam 12 that showed policemen have to account for their actions. The LAPD wanted to communicate, and in this episode actually came out and said, that they police their own. What better way to illustrate that than by showing that even Joe Friday had to account for his actions and face a shooting board that could lead to criminal charges. Over on Adam 12, both Jim Reed and Pete Malloy had to face shooting boards, althought after the first couple of seasons, these were not portrayed prominently perhaps because the public got the message, and it wasn’t as interesting after the first few times.
This episode has a pretty good solution. In fact, in a 1993 episode of the Cosby Mysteries, Bill Cosby’s character discovers an important clue, as watching this episode causes him to realize where a bullet is embedded. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, having the episode used as a cheap plot device is probably close behind.
This happens to be one of my favorite episodes from the 1960s series. Considering that Friday rarely ever fired his weapon in this series made this story more dramatic. It’s interesting to note that Joe Friday states in a later episode (I believe in a “Dragnet ’69 episode), that he has only had to “put the hammer down” on a suspect twice. Would that be this episode, plus the episode “The Big Thief” in the original series in 1953?