Let's discuss the North Hollywood shootout

Going back to the comment on SWAT teams, my personal experience has been that unless an agency has a full time SWAT team (and only one agency in my County does), it will take upwards of 30 minutes to an hour to get the guys together, gearded up, briefed and to the scene. Sure, when they get there, they TKOB but in the meantime people are getting killed. Most teams are part time and the officers assigned to them have other duties. So, when called out they have to respond from where ever they are.

The "active shooter" concept that started after Columbine recognized the fact that waiting for SWAT to arrive in active shooter situations gets people killed. Give the line officers the means to end a bad situation quickly if the situation arises.

Most of us agree that the solution is providing rifle caliber carbines and proper training to street officers. Some administrators on the other hand, are slow to act on this. It took me close to 8 years to get the administration of my agency to authorize them. They (the PD) still will not provide them but does authorize officers to carry personally owned rifles which is better then nothing.

In my 18+ years as an LEO, I've learned that most agency adminstrators are reactive in their outlook no matter how much they may profess to otherwise. I've seen how fast an administration can draft and approve a general order or policy if they see fit and the chief believes it is important (these usually involve something you Will NOT do). It's a different matter when attempting to get gear for the guys and girls and the street.

Someone usually has to get hurt to make a change. It took one of our officers getting killed to begin correcting serious radio problems our patrol officers had been compaining about for years and to get our K-9 unit fully manned.
 
The police here in our small town had a shootout with a bank robber about six years ago. He had an AR-15, the cops had Glocks. The citizens pitched in and bought M&Ps for every patrol car. Every officer now has one with EOTech 550 sights. Every cop in the USA should have one IMO.
 
MPs - do you mean TNG? M&Ps are the new SW handgun. And MPs are HK SMGs and in pistol calibers wouldn't be that useful against the dreaded body armor boys?

So, is that it? I love asking gun geek questions.
 
Its fairly easy to see why the North Hollywood and Miami shootout went as it did. The officers or agents simply were not as trained or motivated as their attackers. It wasnt about equipment or pistol caliber, but motivation and training.

There have been many incidents where one or two motivated individuals were able to take down huge groups of men. You can easily look them up by typing the words "Medal of Honor" into google. There have been several well documented stories where a few men with little equipment have taken down over 100 well organized and equipped soldiers.

What is truly needed is not SWAT teams, but better trained and motivated officers. The reason why police pulled out during the Rodney King riots was because they were not trained or motivated to deal with the situation. Why would you risk your life for the city of Los Angeles?

This is the greatest case for civilians carrying concealed weapons. To a certain extent, you can trust the police. However, how do you know the officers patrolling your neighborhood are not really disgruntled employees who hate their managers and not willing to risk their lives to get to you?
 
Its fairly easy to see why the North Hollywood and Miami shootout went as it did. The officers or agents simply were not as trained or motivated as their attackers. It wasnt about equipment or pistol caliber, but motivation and training.
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You are kidding, right? Two guys with rifle-rated body armor and full auto rifles with AP ammo against cops with predominately handguns in a fight that took place mostly at distances beyond 75 yards and you think it was due to motivation and training?

Have you seen the video? Just what sorts of great training do you think the bad guys had?

This is the greatest case for civilians carrying concealed weapons.
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This surely isn't right if the reasoning is that civilians are to be considered so well trained or better so than the cops. Few gun owners have much in the way of defensive training and very few actually practice it.
 
they brought a armored truck to retrieve wounded, i wouldve used it to plow down those d bags instead lets see how a ak/g3/ar does against taht
 
Thats right, training. The first part of training is to train under actual conditions. There is a scene in the film "Glory" where one of the soldiers was firing great at the range. Then this same individual was firing while a pistol was going off in the background and he couldnt seem to hit his mark.

All it would have taken was one cool headed officer to lay down one bullet to the head. However, on that day, no one had a cool head. Everyone was running around and huddling in packs behind cars.
 
M&P AR-15s - well done, TNG!

I was thinking about handguns as a bunch of folks I shoot with were buying the SW handguns and it was my first association. :)

I also remember that after the shootout, some high level officers were talking about getting 45 ACP handguns as if that was the problem.
 
Let's see. You are a police officer in a super liberal area.
In L.A., in the movie business, if you are anything other then super liberal, anti-gun, you don't work, unless you make it so big, you can finance your own pictures.

So, while Hollyweird makes themselves incredibly rich using firearms in their movies, they are scared to death the little, poor people will come out of the wood work, and take all their property, money, and lives. These people control L.A. politically, and financially. They pick who gets elected to office, and, D.A.s and police chiefs are elected officials, so, they mirror their constituent money backers, and, they also are anti-gun. At the least hint of some sort of absurd thing like a .50 caliber ban, they go with it, at the expense of their employees, the people, and the government. Likewise they would have pink water pistols for police officers if they followed their backers to the T.

So, first, if you are that elected official, and, some sort of horror story comes out, like an officer guns down a 7 year old gang member who was shooting at him with an Uzi, your first reaction is to support the anti-gun folks, and, take the whatever caliber gun that was used, demonize it, and remove it from service.

If you take the support your officer position, you no longer have a position, come next election, as the movie folks have found another puppet to run, and put in your place.
 
Its fairly easy to see why the North Hollywood and Miami shootout went as it did. The officers or agents simply were not as trained or motivated as their attackers. It wasnt about equipment or pistol caliber, but motivation and training.
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You always post with such authority, yet you demonstrate every day just how little you actually know about anything. Unmotivated? I'm sure they were only 50% in favor of staying alive...

There is a scene in the film "Glory" where one of the soldiers was firing great at the range. Then this same individual was firing while a pistol was going off in the background and he couldnt seem to hit his mark.

All it would have taken was one cool headed officer to lay down one bullet to the head. However, on that day, no one had a cool head. Everyone was running around and huddling in packs behind cars.
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Stop watching movies and using them as your basis for knowledge. You obviously have never had bullets zipping past you or you wouldn't make assertions like that. "Huddling in packs behind cars"--- Cars are cover (sort of) and you generally use cover when you're being shot at by a long gun (or a pistol, for that matter).
 
Thank you Hondo.

You stated my point far better than I could've. It's not easy to lay down one accurate head shot when bullets are coming towards you, and one just might have your name on it. :)

Me, if given a choice of "cover" or being a so called "cool headed officer" I'll take the cover every time. Why you ask? Because you never know when the other guy just might get lucky.

Biker
 
I've always wondered why the LEOs did just take the one of the armored cars they took to round up the wounded and just run over the bad guys.
 
All it would have taken was one cool headed officer to lay down one bullet to the head.
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One cool-headed officer who was a VERY good shot.

Ever tried to hit a moving target the size of a human head at 75 yards? I've tried. I've even managed it. But only 1 or 2 times out of 50 rounds and that under no significant pressure--certainly nothing equivalent to being shot at by two guys with full auto rifles. To get an idea of my skill level, I can consistently shoot 3" five shot groups @ 25 yards with a handgun if time is not an issue.

So on the one hand you've got cops who have to make headshots with handguns at 75 yards to be effective vs bandits who only have to make body hits with long guns at the same distance. Winning under those odds takes more than a cool head, it takes a considerable amount of skill.

It's completely unrealistic to expect someone to make head shots at those distances using a handgun against multiple opponents armed with full-auto long guns.
 
It is very easy to armchair quarterback this incident. But looking at it I think that it actually turned out quite well. 2 dead bad guys and wounded officers that will heal.

Having lived in tha area and been at that location many times itwas a recepie for disaster. There are thousands pf people in that area at any given time and things could have gotten bad fast.

Rather than try to reinvent the wheel here how about looking at it for what it was.. A situation that was very dangerous that no civilians got hurt in. To me that was a huge success.

Our second guessing how it could have gone better is pointless because the outcome was a success. LE learned from it and moved on so should we.
 
It ain't over, and we havent seen the last of fools like these.
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They weren't fools. To think otherwise is a serious mistake. Both of those men were extremely competent as evidenced by their previous successful operations. They simply got unlucky that time.
 
An old beat up Mosin Nagant 44 would have done the trick, with ball ammo.
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I didn't read every single post, but it seems that any .30-06/.308 class rifle round would have been enough to end the shootout much sooner. Even if it couldn't penetrate, a couple-thousand lbs of impact force would break ribs and possible disrupt internal organs. Surely that would be enough to put down the assailants in a minute or so.

As has been noted, it seems that slugs would have made a night and day difference as well. Slam something hard enough, and no matter what it's wrapped in, it will break.
 
They weren't fools. To think otherwise is a serious mistake. Both of those men were extremely competent as evidenced by their previous successful operations. They simply got unlucky that time.
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No they were fools. They robbed a bank very slowly and loudly. When discovered by police instead of surrendering or making a quick get away they chose to stand and fight against a police department. It would have taken very good luck for them to have come out on top.

As for their previous "operations", they successfully robbed banks. Robbing banks isn't that difficult, but it is much easier without body armor, pills and machine guns.


The cops did the best they could, considering they were involved in a pistol versus fully automatic rifle shoot-out. Sure one of them could have shot the bad guys in the head but that would have required a combination of courage, skill and luck.

I expect that I would be a terrible shot if someone was firing a machine gun at me.
 
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