Does anyone recall that shootout in Hollywood, California in 1997?
I had to laugh. This is one of those events that occurs repeatedly and often on this and other forums.
Just curious, if you were one of those L.A.P.D officers that day, what would u have done? Let's assume you were armed with only a 9mm handgun and had a cell phone, and there was a nearby gun store. What would you have done different that day, or would you do the same thing they did?
I am not sure of the great aspect of having a cell phone. I don't know if any officers did or did not, but they did have radios. Also, they didn't exactly know there was a gun store nearby. It wasn't like it was right there on the corner. To my knowledge, none of the requisitioned guns actually entered the fight. SWAT showed up with their own guns and that last final assault on Emil was by SWAT officers with their own guns. If any of the gunstore AR15s made it into battle, they apparently were not used very effectively to make any of the needed head shots.
Now assuming I can play 'what if' scenarios which ignore the fact that I'd have been scared s***less... I'd have started trying to hit their AKs or their heads in order to disable their arms or give them concussions...
This was an interesting response, but naive as to the circumstances. Hundreds of rounds were fired by LAPD and if you ever get to watch the original video, try to count the number of shots you see impacting things OTHER than the bad guys. Some of the impact scars on the bank's wall were amazingly high. I am not claiming I could do better, only that that shots would work only if they were in excess of 10 feet tall.
Radio calls went out early describing the fact that the bad guys had "heavy" body armor and to shoot for the head. They tried. For the vast majority of the time, they failed in this task. Keep in mind that shots were being fired with pistols usually from distances something like 50-80 yards to as much as 120 yards. LAPD did not train their officers for making head shots at those ranges with pistols. Sadly, while shotguns were present and could have made the shot with slugs, nobody had any slugs. I don't know if they had anything larger than bird shot in the shotguns. If so, they still managed to not be able to deliver head shots. Bird shot, obviously, wasn't going to be great for stopping the bad guys at distance.
I don't think all of the weapons were full auto.
No, not all the rounds fired were full auto.
"According to Commander Scott LaChasse of the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) Criminal Intelligence Group and Lt. Tom Runyan, Commanding Officer of the LAPD SWAT, during the shootout at the bank, the suspects fired an estimated 1,110 rounds from three fully automatic AK-47s, a .223 fully automatic Bushmaster rifle, a .308 semiautomatic H&K and a semiautomatic 9mm Beretta handgun. -
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~hmikkola/shootout.html
I'd have tried to run the idiots down. Kevlar doesn't stop trucks. Vehicles often are the BEST available weapons, but it takes an open mind to think of them that way.
Right. Kevlar does not stop trucks. Then again, armored cars don't hold up forever to repeated and concentrated fire which these guys were capable of producing with AP ammo, known or believed to be being used according to the radio calls going out. The glass will fail. Not only that, while attempting to run down the bandit, impacts on the glass will cause enough distortion to severely limit visibility. Between a lack of visibility, hail of fire threatening to penetrate, and the armored truck's great ability to maneuver, I would not count on hitting a bad guy who is on foot. It may take a lot of shots, but the glass (plexi, layered, BP, whatever) will fail. I don't know about the engine compartment, but my guess is that it will fail under heavy fire as well, especially the grill area.
The main problem (and little-known fact) with those guys was that (and I say this with a tear) they were former USMC Infantry. They were trained for this type of situation, so to speak. It was (and probably still is) a set back for the USMC, but it does prove intensity of training. Also, as a side note, Lee Harvey Oswald was USMC as well.
Wow, so little known that the robbers didn't even know they were military trained! The late Mr. Matasareanu, 30, was born in Romania and grew up partly in Altadena. He turned to computers because he was teased for being chubby. After graduating from DeVry Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, he operated his own business, working as a computer technician and software designer, his mother, Valerie Nicolescu, told reporters. -
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/1211/index2.html Chiram, I think you are confused with the bandits who shot it out with the FBI in 1986. Platt being the one who used military tactics on the unsuspecting FBI agents and advanced on their position when he basically was in a losing position in the fight. This completely took the agents by surprise.
Are you sure the criminals were ex-military, I thought they were eastern europeans, they might have had citizenship, but they had lengthy criminal records.
Emil was Romanian. Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr., was an American as far as I know. Neither were military or particularly well trained in that manner, although both apparently were fairly familiar with firearms and armor. Phillips wasn't that knowing about guns. He abandoned his AK47 when it stove-piped, an easy malfunction to clear.
robbed a bank in california, and took people inside the bank hostage, shooting at officers and helicopters. To make the story short, no officers or civilians were killed, and the bad guys were all killed.
