At around 12 minutes, Detective Petrie shoots a purse snatcher. The chase ends at the top of four flights of steps and the exhausted actor wasn't able to hold his breath very well for the death scene.
At about the halfway point, when Dave (Brion James) is standing in the chop shop talking about what to they are going to do with Isbecki, he is holding a bag of Laura Scudder's potato chips which were sold only on the West Coast at that time.