North Hollywood Shootout...

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whm1974

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So reading this has gotten me to thinking about Police preparedness and proper tactics to quickly handle this sort of thing if this sort of thing did happen in the city where I live...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
Now I've seen the movie this made about this and while watching it I was thinking if only if someone just showed up with a 19th Century Buffalo rifle and dealt with those two Perps with one shot each, center of chest or possibly head shots?

With close to 2,000 rounds fired by everyone involved I'm surprised that are the two bad guys were the only ones killed...
 
You have to realize it was very apparently an elaborate suicide acted out based on the movie Heat, and that the criminal robbery act was intended primarily as a provocation. Only with this is mind, the extended time frame of the shootout and the outcome makes sense.

The perpetrators had armor that protected them from direct hits by pistols and shotguns, but Mătăsăreanu also had a trauma plate that protected his chest from hits with 5.56x45mm. Had M4's been in every patrol car the way they have become since, patrol officers could have engaged these men immediately instead of waiting for the SWAT team to arrive. They didn't need any special or elaborate weapons. Just about any rifle would have worked. Today, with better armor more widely available, ordinary rifles could still be effective because they allow for better shot placement at longer ranges than open-sighted handguns and shotguns.
 
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Back when that happened the local PD did not have long guns in the cars. A few carried a shotgun. Now it's become VERY common for PD's to have an AR in many of the vehicles. It was amazing those kooks did not kill a lot of innocents spraying lead all over hell and gone.
 
beating a dead horse.gif
 
Alex Clayton said:
Back when that happened the local PD did not have long guns in the cars. A few carried a shotgun. Now it's become VERY common for PD's to have an AR in many of the vehicles. It was amazing those kooks did not kill a lot of innocents spraying lead all over hell and gone.
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Loaded with Buckshot... I do wonder if a few slugs could have quickly ended that firefight?
 
This has been analyzed to death in many, many places. The OP should just look it up.
 
whm1974 said:
Loaded with Buckshot... I do wonder if a few slugs could have quickly ended that firefight?
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Yes slugs would have as would OO. Even with OO they could fairly easily have at least brought them down. They were hit several times but only with handgun fire and the hits were in the body armor they were wearing. Don't know what ever came of it but the one the PD killed was shot in the feet and or ankle and bled out. His family sued, saying they let their poor loved one bleed out. Don't know if they actually got any money. Sure hope not.
The other guy shot himself in the head. It was at the time listed as suicide. Several people later said they thought he may have done it accidentally. He got hit in the back and even though the Kevlar stopped the round it made him drop the pistol he had in hand. When he bent to pick it up he shot himself and some were not sure he did not do it accidentally not on purpose.
 
Tactics are everything... Officers in that era had never encountered anything similar and were ill prepared at best - no matter what their weapons were...

After the fact it was pretty obvious that targeting their feet would have worked well - and if I were the commander on the scene we’d have used a vehicle on them... Anything to overcome their high volume of fire and their body armor. You’ll note that subject #2 was in fact finally taken down by fire to the lower legs if I remember correctly.

Police forces are very good at reviewing critical incidents after the fact and learning what to do the “next time” but not so good at looking forward to the next threat. At least that’s my take on it.

At times your best defense in a violent encounter may not be a firearm...
 
The one fact I remember reading about this incident was that the number of .38 Special JHPs pulled out of the perps armor was way out of proportion to the number of rounds fired at the incident. I guess the older officers with their K-frames could shoot a bit better...
 
My one take away from the incident, and PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS MONDAY MORNING COUCH QUARTERBACKING AT ITS FINEST, is why didn’t they use the armored car they had there (bank armored car not military vehicle) to just drop her down in granny low and run one or both over?

I believe, and it’s been a long time, they used it to get to the wounded.

Again, I HATE when people who have no concept of how fast things happen and how dynamic they can be weigh in on things and I am certainly not sitting here saying THEY SHOULDA DONE!!!!!! I have just always thought that that armored car would have made quite an effective weapon.
 
cslinger said:
My one take away from the incident, and PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS MONDAY MORNING COUCH QUARTERBACKING AT ITS FINEST, is why didn’t they use the armored car they had there (bank armored car not military vehicle) to just drop her down in granny low and run one or both over?

I believe, and it’s been a long time, they used it to get to the wounded.

Again, I HATE when people who have no concept of how fast things happen and how dynamic they can be weigh in on things and I am certainly not sitting here saying THEY SHOULDA DONE!!!!!! I have just always thought that that armored car would have made quite an effective weapon.
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It is easy to say that well after the fact, but when things are going very quickly and quite badly, will YOU be able to THINK of this? Given that the average person doesn't think of a random vehicle as a weapon...
 
Once or twice years ago I used my patrol car as a weapon to both intimidate and to disrupt a situation. No, it’s not kosher but can be very effective...
Glad I’m long out of police work since there doesn’t seem that there’s any room at all for “creativity” these days. There were no body cams in my era either... Thank heavens.
 
whm1974 said:
It is easy to say that well after the fact, but when things are going very quickly and quite badly, will YOU be able to THINK of this? Given that the average person doesn't think of a random vehicle as a weapon...
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ABSOLUTELY. Hence I prefaced by saying this is Monday Morning Qb’ing and people don’t realize how fast, dynamic and chaotic things can be.

That I just something that I have thought about going back to when it was happening or right after. Just something I have thought, not a criticism of those involved in any way.
 
cslinger writes:

..why didn’t they use the armored car they had there (bank armored car not military vehicle) to just drop her down in granny low and run one or both over?
Click to expand...

Yep, Monday-morning quarterbacking (and several hundred Monday mornings later!), but they did use it to reach and extract the wounded. I doubt anyone thought about running a shooter down with it because vehicles actually are very easy to avoid, and they would then risk losing that evacuation asset.
 
Seems I recall at the time some of the officers, uh, "appropriating" rifles from a nearby Oshman's Sporting Goods store in that fight. Not sure how much of a factor, if any, those acquisitions were because I don't know when during the incident that took place, or if any of those long arms were actually deployed effectively (it's likely that patrol officers weren't routinely trained with them back then.)

With good placement, a Mosin-Nagant, priced at around $69 back then, could have ended that situation pretty quickly. ;)
 
MedWheeler said:
Seems I recall at the time some of the officers, uh, "appropriating" rifles from a nearby Oshman's Sporting Goods store in that fight. Not sure how much of a factor, if any, those acquisitions were because I don't know when during the incident that took place, or if any of those long arms were actually deployed effectively (it's likely that patrol officers weren't routinely trained with them back then.)

With good placement, a Mosin-Nagant, priced at around $69 back then, could have ended that situation pretty quickly. ;)
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How good was their homemade plated body armor? Didn't it stop a few .223 rounds fired by SWAT? Granted the 7.62x54R does hit a great harder then .223...
 
Alex Clayton said:
Back when that happened the local PD did not have long guns in the cars. A few carried a shotgun. Now it's become VERY common for PD's to have an AR in many of the vehicles. It was amazing those kooks did not kill a lot of innocents spraying lead all over hell and gone.
Click to expand...
Yep, they went to a local gun store (this was before LA banned such) and borrowed some.
 
Seems I recall at the time some of the officers, uh, "appropriating" rifles from a nearby Oshman's Sporting Goods store in that fight.
Click to expand...
It was a local gun store, B&B Guns. It closed in the early 2000's.
 
Now I've seen the movie this made about this and while watching it I was thinking if only if someone just showed up with a 19th Century Buffalo rifle and dealt with those two Perps with one shot each, center of chest or possibly head shots?
Click to expand...

These days? Probably be arrested for murder, media outcry for the vigilante to go to jail for life...
 
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