After the Trail of Broken Treaties, Herb Powless and Leonard Peltier, who had been arrested for trespassing at the Fort Lawton occupation in Washington State in 1969, returned together to Milwaukee. On the evening of November 22, 1972{3} Peltier was sitting in the Texas Restaurant when two off duty Milwaukee policemen picked a fight with him. As he left the restaurant later they jumped him, beating him so fiercely that according to later court testimony, one of the cops broke most of the blood vessels in his hand couldn't work for several days afterward. In the struggle they found a gun on Leonard Peltier (which did not work, the firing pin being broken), and so they charged him with attempted murder. One cop received a citation for "saving" his buddy's life by foiling the "murder attempt" by dramatically thrusting his finger between the hammer and the firing pin as Peltier allegedly pulled the trigger.
After being released on bond, Peltier fled underground, but he would eventually be returned to face the murder charge. At the subsequent trial four years later, it was determined that the entire incident had been a fraud, set up by the two policemen. Anne Guild, girlfriend of policeman Ronald Halvinka, testified that, prior to the incident at the restaurant, Halvinka had shown her a photograph of Peltier and had told her that "he was going to help the FBI get a big one."