The incident highlighted the growing divergence between the means available to the police and the offensive and defensive technologies employed by criminals. Video footage of the incident clearly shows police pistol bullets striking the suspects with little or no effect, largely due to the body armor worn by the suspects. Their body armor was able to stop the .38 caliber and 9 mm projectiles fired by the officers' service handguns.

The ineffectiveness of the pistol rounds in penetrating the suspects' body armor led to a trend in the United States towards arming selected police patrol officers with .223 caliber/5.56 mm AR-15s semiautomatic rifles. This provided first responders with greater ability to effectively confront and neutralize heavily armed and armored criminals.

Advocates of gun control in the United States cited the incident as evidence that U.S. gun control laws were inadequate to prevent military-class weaponry ending up in the hands of prior felons. Opponents of gun control counter that as the weapons had been obtained illegally, the incident did not indicate that criminal use of legally registered fully automatic firearms was a problem.

The LAPD patrol officers were not adequately armed or protected to deal with such criminals. The gunmen were firing rifle rounds from illegally-modified fully automatic assault rifles while being protected by full body armor. The officers' handguns and shotguns could not penetrate the suspects' armor, while the suspects' weapons were capable of severely wounding officers and bystanders through cement walls and automobiles.

The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers (Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu) and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on February 28, 1997, at a Bank of America teller-office.

The shootout resulted in the wounding of fourteen people (twelve police officers and two civilians) and the deaths of both bank robbers. Although only the suspects were killed, the sheer number of injuries made this one of the bloodiest single cases of violent crime in the 1990s, and one of the most significant single bank robberies of the 20th century.

The Weapons
Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu had a large array of firearms, which included:

o HK91: Used by Phillips as he fired at officers on the left side of the bank, the rifle itself took a hit to the bolt guide rails, which caused little damage.

o Type 56 Assault Rifle: Used by Phillips after discarding the HK91, as he started the escape. The rifle jammed.

o AK47s: Both Phillips and Matasareanu used these rifles during the robbery.

o Bushmaster AR15: Matasareanu retrieved this rifle from the trunk of their getaway car after sustaining a leg wound. He then waited in the car for Phillips, while shooting through the windows. This was also the rifle used by Matasareanu as he was engaged in his last shootout with SWAT officers.

o Beretta 92 9mm pistol: Phillips committed suicide with this weapon after sustaining several gunshot wounds.

Facts
* Approximately 370 LAPD officers were called to the scene.

* Other than the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and units of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded to the scene. In the MVP documentary film, the LAPD sergeant being interviewed discusses the roles of those agencies as well as LA Airport PD, Burbank PD and LA School PD. Off-duty LAPD officers came in prior to the announcement of city-wide TAC-ALERT, which activates all personnel on duty. Members of the LAPD training at the Valley area police academy as well as the main LA police academy located in Elysian Park also responded. SWAT officers also responded from the police academy. One response was from Chief Willie Williams, who came from Parker Center, the LAPD's headquarters, located downtown.

* The following year, seventeen LAPD officers were awarded Medals of Valor from the department for their actions and bravery during the shootout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_hollywood_shootout


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i34fbTMEius The video is from the film adaptation 44 minutes : North Hollywood Shootout - "Based on a shocking true story, 44 MINUTES recounts a fateful day in the life of several LAPD officers. In the summer of 1997 in North Hollywood, two wild gunmen with AK-47's began an assault on dozens of defenseless policemen. The results were tragic, but in the midst of the madness several well-trained and heroic individuals rose to the challenge, saving innumerable lives in the process."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362389/

I always remember the twist at the end where the family of Matasareanu filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the LAPD for basicly allowing him to bleed to death in the street. If memory serves, he was alive but significantly wounded, handcuffed, and laying on the road with police all around him for more than an hour before recieving medical assistance.

Oh, its mentioned in the wikipedia article, but only says the trial resulted in a hung jury and the family dropped the case.

google search for 'Matasareanu lawsuit' showed the jury trial was "hopelessly locked" at 9 to 3.

If i remember right, they were not wearing head protection. proves that police should spend more time at the range then driving around giving me tickets for stupid things.

Even if they were wearing head gear there are no helmets that can stop a 45 ACP round. Shoot the throat too, come on no more center Mass crap. Police wear armor, they should expect the enemy to be doing the same thing. It just proves that the police involved were not prepared for that battle mentally. Shotguns do minimal at the range they were firing. A hand gun is accurate up to 100 yards direct fire, after that it could start to arc.

Now the swat that was called in did it the right way, but they spend hours in the range learning how to stress shoot. More money is spent on Navy Seal teams shooting at a shoot house, or a range then they actually use in combat. The more you Train for battle the less you bleed in battle.

A story i heard from a teacher: "A kid in chicago or some place, shot 10 people with 9 bullets and killed them all, the police shoot 50 rounds at the kid and only one hits him." If only they would train police in muzzle discipline then their wouldn't be stories like that one.

Good find, i saw a documentary of this one the History channel, and the swat guy they interviewed said the same thing, that the patrolmen answering the call were in no way trained or equipped to deal with the situation.

Where does this fit in with the 'no death' videos? Since two people died in the making of it, I can't see how it's different to JFK etc (maybe I don't understand the rule?) *blog to find out...

Sending this video to Sift Talk for discussion (sent by gold star member benjee)

> Where does this fit in with the 'no death' videos?
I haven't actually watched this one yet, but I'm guessing it doesn't show the actual shooting/deaths. That policy is not intended to prevent the posting of videos related to events where someone died, but videos depicting persons being killed, e.g., Faces of Death style gore fests whose main purpose is to entertain through fatality.

The this will star another one of these "well what about 9/11" talks. The way i see it is there is nothing wrong with this video as nobody actualy dies in it. It just says someone died. Nothing wrong with that. It's news. Face it.

So i'm gonna go ahead and *return this. If anyone disagress, feel free to argue the toss with me and send it back to the blog.

Returning this video from Sift Talk (Returned by gold star member darksun)

This is sooo new! NOT!

I missed this because I was in college and didn't watch the news. I did see a glimpse of this and thought it was another ordinary shoot out, not a big one. Crazy stuff. It reminded me of Heat movie.

Starts to arc at 100 yards? The worlds best competition shooters wouldn't be able to hit someone's head at 100 yards with any consistancy under that kind of pressure. A .45ACP drops almost 1 foot vertically at 50 yards...

Any cop getting close enough to use a handgun on a guy with a rifle is due for a darwin award.

Brilliant and valorous. How pleased I am that these officers were able this cash to the bank. And only 14 wounded and two deaths after a shootout in a heavily-populated area.

I am watching 44 minutes right now. Crazy stuff even though it is just a remake based on the real life event. I just realized it is almost a decade.

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by Zifnab.

choggie has fixed this video's dead embed code - no star awarded because choggie was awarded too recently.

Made a player with all the parts.....cheers

*dead again

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by messenger.

*news

Adding video to channels (News) - requested by ant.