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A DECADE AGO, TWO GUNMEN ROBBED THE NORTH HOLLYWOOD BRANCH OF THE BANK OF AMERICA AND TOUCHED OFF A GUNFIGHT WITH THE LAPD THAT REMAINS ONE OF THE BLOODIEST DAYS IN U.S. LAW ENFORCEMENT HISTORY. WHAT LESSONS WERE LEARNED FROM THAT TERRIBLE DAY, AND HOW MIGHT A REPEAT OF IT BE AVOIDED?
February 28, 1997. Los Angeles policeman Loren Pareil and his partner Martin Perello were minutes into their daytime patrol as they drove past the North Hollywood branch of the Bank of America on their way to one of the five calls they had received that morning. As they passed the bank, Perello instinctively looked over at it, as all police are trained to do whenever passing a business considered to be a high robbery risk. Calmly entering the bank were two men clad in black jumpsuits and ski masks, each carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. Their intent was clear.
Perello swung the car around and Pareil put out an "officer needs help" call that put the entire city on high alert as he and Perello parked their car in the bank's south parking lot. Within minutes, other police arrived on the scene in response, thanks in part to there being other patrol cars in the vicinity, and also to the fact that the North Hollywood police station was only two miles away. Pareil and PerelIo immediately began directing their fellow officers to lock down the bank so the robbers could be contained, but that plan was complicated by the sound of automatic gunfire.
"If you've ever heard an AK-47, they are so damned loud, we didn't even know if he was out in the streets. We didn't know where he was," recounts Pareil, a veteran of the Vietnam War as well as the LAPD.
He and Perello initially thought that the gunmen had begun to execute bank patrons, but what really happened was that moments after entering the bank, the gunmen fired into the ceiling to get the attention of the customers. They then shot their way into the bank tellers' secure area in order to gain access to the vault and blasted out the locks to the bank's ATM safe. One of the gunmen then went outside of the bank to...