Vintage Police Car Pays Tribute to Slain Dallas Officer J.D. Tippit

Officer killed trying to capture president's killer

While the City of Dallas ramps up in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination this November,  the Dallas Police Association is quietly celebrating the memory of one of their own from that tragic day.

In an Oak Cliff neighborhood, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit was shot to death by Lee Harvey Oswald not long after the Kennedy assassination.

In an effort to move past the tragedy, Tippit's car was issued to another officer the same day he was killed and then destroyed in a car crash some years later.

A replica of Tippit's patrol car is now on display at the Dallas Police Association’s building on Griffin Street, south of downtown Dallas.

While it’s not Tippit’s original patrol car, the fully restored 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 started out as a civilian car before it was painted and used as a Dallas police car in the 1977 movie, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.

It’s not known what happened to the car after that, but according to Sr. Corporal Rod Janich with the Dallas Police Department, it was found in an Arlington scrap yard years ago and restored by the Dallas Fire Museum before being brought out to memorialize the fallen officer.

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