It was 9:17 AM. February 28, 1997. North Hollywood looked like a war zone, and honestly, the LAPD wasn’t ready for it. When Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu walked out of the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, they weren't just carrying rifles. They were wearing North Hollywood shootout armor—a DIY monstrosity of Kevlar and steel that turned a standard robbery into a forty-four-minute nightmare. You've probably seen the grainy news footage of bullets bouncing off these guys like they were made of stone. It wasn’t a movie effect.
The police were firing .38 caliber revolvers and 9mm Berettas. Those rounds hit the suspects' torsos and just... stopped. Imagine being a beat cop, standing behind the door of a Crown Victoria, realizing your service weapon is essentially a cap gun against what’s walking toward you. It changed policing forever.
The homemade engineering of the North Hollywood shootout armor
This wasn't stuff you could just buy at a surplus store back then. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu didn't just order Level IV plates online. They spent months sewing together multiple Type IIIA Kevlar vests. They didn't stop at the chest, either. They created custom leggings, arm guards, and even a groin protector. It was heavy. Over 40 pounds of gear each.
Phillips was the primary architect of this "tank suit." He used quilted fiberglass and extra ballistic material to cover his vitals, which is why he was able to take dozens of hits without slowing down. People often forget that the armor was so thick it actually restricted their movement. They moved like zombies. Slow. Methodical. Unstoppable. The armor was designed to defeat the exact rounds the LAPD carried: the 9mm and the .38 Special.
It worked.
During the chaos, officers reported seeing "puffs of dust" coming off the suspects' clothes as bullets hit the Kevlar. But the men kept walking. They kept firing their modified Romanian AIM and Chinese Type 56 rifles (AK-47 variants). These rifles were loaded with 7.62x39mm steel-core ammunition. That's a terrifying mismatch. On one side, you have soft-body armor that can't stop a rifle round. On the other, you have criminals wearing enough Kevlar to stop a handgun, firing rounds that go through police cars like they're made of paper.
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Why the LAPD couldn't pierce the "Iron Men"
Most people assume the police just missed. They didn't. LAPD officers hit Phillips and Mătăsăreanu over 100 times combined. The problem was physics. A 9mm bullet traveling at roughly 1,200 feet per second lacks the kinetic energy to penetrate multiple layers of reinforced Kevlar.
The North Hollywood shootout armor was a literal wall.
At one point, SWAT wasn't even on the scene yet. Standard patrol officers had to run to a nearby gun store—B&B Sales—to borrow AR-15s and ammunition. Can you imagine that today? A sergeant walking into a shop, flashing a badge, and grabbing rifles off the rack because the department's gear was useless. That's the level of desperation caused by this armor. It exposed a massive "capability gap" in American law enforcement.
The technical breakdown of the protection
To understand why this gear was so effective, you have to look at the "Type" system used by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
- Type IIIA: This is what the gunmen used as their base. It’s rated to stop .44 Magnum rounds.
- The Modification: By layering multiple IIIA vests, they increased the "blunt force trauma" protection. Even if a bullet doesn't go through, the impact can break ribs or rupture organs. These guys didn't seem to care.
- The Weak Points: They didn't have armor on their heads. They didn't have armor on their feet.
Phillips eventually died from a self-inflicted wound to the head while simultaneously being shot in the spine by police. Mătăsăreanu was brought down by officers who aimed specifically at his lower legs—the only place the North Hollywood shootout armor didn't cover. They fired under the cars where he was hiding, hitting his shins and ankles until he bled out. It was a brutal, tactical solution to a technical problem.
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How 1997 changed the gear in your local patrol car
Before this day, "militarization" wasn't a word people used for local police. After North Hollywood, it became the blueprint. The Pentagon started the 1033 program, which funneled surplus military equipment to local precincts.
You see those "BearCat" armored vehicles in every mid-sized city now? That’s because of North Hollywood. You see patrol officers carrying semi-automatic rifles in the trunk? Also North Hollywood. The department realized that "protect and serve" is impossible if you're hiding behind a tire while a guy in a homemade suit of mail walks toward you with a drum-magazine AK.
There's a lot of debate about whether this was a good thing. Some experts, like those at the ACLU, argue this created a "warrior" culture that distanced police from the public. Others, like former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, argued it was a necessary evolution. If the bad guys have the North Hollywood shootout armor and military-grade rifles, the police can't show up with 1950s technology. It's an arms race that essentially started in that bank parking lot.
What we get wrong about the ballistic performance
A common myth is that the gunmen were wearing "bulletproof" suits. No such thing exists. Kevlar is "bullet-resistant." If the LAPD had been issued rifles from the start, the fight would have lasted minutes, not nearly an hour.
A standard 5.56mm rifle round (like what SWAT eventually used) travels at over 3,000 feet per second. It would have cut through the layered Kevlar of the North Hollywood shootout armor easily. The delay wasn't about the suspects' skill; it was entirely about the armor's ability to negate the specific handguns the officers were carrying. It was a hardware failure for the city of Los Angeles.
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The aftermath and the legacy of the "Battle of North Hollywood"
The sheer volume of fire was insane. Over 2,000 rounds were swapped. Miraculously, no one died except the two gunmen, though 12 officers and 8 civilians were wounded. The fact that the casualty count wasn't in the hundreds is a testament to the bravery of the officers who stayed in the line of fire despite knowing their bullets were useless.
Today, you can actually see the armor and the modified weapons at the Los Angeles Police Museum. When you see it in person, the "homemade" nature of it is actually quite chilling. It’s sloppy. It’s held together with straps and duct tape in some places. But it worked well enough to shut down a major American city for a morning.
Practical takeaways for understanding modern ballistics
If you're looking at this from a historical or technical perspective, here is the reality of the situation:
- Handguns are defensive, not offensive. The North Hollywood shootout proved that a handgun is a tool to get you to a rifle. If a suspect is wearing any kind of decent body armor, a 9mm or .40 S&W is basically a loud noise.
- Coverage vs. Mobility. The gunmen could barely run. They couldn't even sit in their getaway car properly because of the groin and thigh plates. In a tactical sense, their armor was their greatest strength and their biggest weakness. It made them slow targets.
- The "Failure to Stop" Drill. This event is why police training shifted toward "Mozambique Drills" or "Failure to Stop" drills—shooting at the pelvic floor or the head when torso shots don't work. If the armor is too thick, you change the target.
The North Hollywood shootout armor remains a benchmark for law enforcement training. It serves as a reminder that the "bad guys" are often just as capable of researching gear and tactics as the "good guys." It wasn't just a robbery; it was a technical ambush that forced the entire world of policing to upgrade its kit or risk being obsolete.
Next Steps for Research
To see the tactical shifts firsthand, look into the 1033 Program statistics for your local county to see how much surplus military gear was acquired post-1997. Additionally, researching NIJ Body Armor Levels will give you a better understanding of why the LAPD's 9mm rounds were physically incapable of penetrating the layered IIIA Kevlar used in the shootout.