Category: Cops

We’re all familiar with the North Hollywood shootout. We’ve explored those details here before. That one had everything. The two bad guys wore body armor and carried genuine automatic weapons. In a shockingly brief period of time, the bank robbers and cops collectively expended roughly 2,000 rounds. Amazingly, despite there being a dozen police officers and eight civilian bystanders injured, the two miscreants were the only KIA. That shocking bit of carnage was quite likely inspired by Michael Mann’s 1995 seminal cop film Heat. Heat sported what is arguably the most compelling gunfight ever put to film.

Seventeen years before Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu shot up North Hollywood, however, there was another bank robbery gone wrong that had an even more sordid outcome. On 9 May 1980, five heavily armed religious fanatics stormed the Norco branch of the Security Pacific Bank. They were motivated by some weird apocalyptic theology and planned to use the proceeds to build a survival enclave out in the desert. The subsequent firefight spread over 25 miles and resulted in the death of a deputy sheriff. They even shot down a police helicopter. North Hollywood and Norco transformed Law Enforcement in America.

The Bad Guys

The bank robbery crew consisted of Belisario Delgado, Manuel Delgado, Christopher Gregory Harven, Russell Harven, and George Wayne Smith. I can only assume the Harvens and the Delgados were brothers. Among the five of them, they were packing an HK 91, an HK 93, an AR15, more than one shotgun, assorted handguns, a sack full of homemade explosive devices, and, incongruously, a katana Ninja sword.

These guys had clearly done their homework. In 1980, the federal assault weapons ban was but a gleam in the eye of then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Back then, semiautomatic modern sporting rifles, both foreign and domestic, were readily available–even in California. It was such stuff as Norco and North Hollywood that precipitated California’s current crop of draconian gun control measures. These Norco guys would have made a fairly decent infantry fire team.

Gun Control Fiction

Ours is a nation of 328 million people. We already have more than 400 million guns. That number climbs by the hundreds if not thousands every single day. It is estimated that there are more than 20 million AR-15 rifles in circulation already. That doesn’t count the AKs, Mini-14s, FN SCARs, Springfield Armory M1As, and dozens of other comparable high-speed smoke poles. Nobody knows the actual number. Suffice it to say, we are some exceptionally well-armed rednecks.

To put that in perspective, there are currently 27.4 million soldiers serving in all of the world’s militaries combined. Somewhere between one-third and half of American households contain at least one firearm. That means armed Americans outnumber all the soldiers on Planet Earth by a ratio of about five-to-one.

Additionally, nowadays, you really can make guns, sound suppressors, and full auto conversion devices in the privacy of your own home using a 3D printer. That unibrow dude, Luigi Mangione, who famously gunned down the insurance executive in New York, apparently built his pistol frame and sound suppressor at home. We will likely tackle that tragic tale at some point in the future.

Despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, California still experiences astronomical homicide rates. They average a bit more than 3,000 dead Californians each year due to homicide. It’s well-intentioned, I suppose, but gun control just doesn’t work. In the sordid pantheon of murder rates per unit population by state, California remains right about in the middle despite its rather myopic view of the US Constitution.

The Job

At around 3:40 in the afternoon, four of the five criminals burst into the Security Pacific Bank and violently announced their intentions. One thug remained outside in the getaway van as a lookout. Folks in another bank located across the street saw these four guys charge into the Security Pacific like it was Omaha Beach and called the cops. Riverside County Sheriff Deputy Glyn Bolasky happened to be stopped at a nearby red light when the call went out. His response time was a whopping 28 seconds.

The thugs were all connected via radio. The lookout guy transmitted, “We’ve been spotted! Let’s go! Let’s go!” and it was game on. The four robbers left the bank with $20,000 in cash. That would be about $76,000 in today’s money.

This was 1980, so street cops typically packed .38-caliber revolvers and 12-gauge pump shotguns. It’s tough to imagine nowadays, but police officers back then went to great lengths to avoid projecting an unduly militarized ambience. There was a very real and pervasive stigma against patrol officers carrying scary long guns or even autoloading pistols in many cases. This left Deputy Bolasky lyrically outgunned. The Bad Guys exited the bank shooting.

The Gunfight

By all accounts, Deputy Bolasky responded magnificently. The bank robbers immediately blew the windshield out of his cruiser. In response, Bolasky backed his cop car up as far as he was able and exited before taking up a firing position behind his scattergun. Once all five shooters were in their van, the driver, Belisario Delgado, took off. As they screamed away, Bolasky fired a charge of buckshot into the driver’s position. One of his pellets caught Delgado behind the left ear, killing him instantly. The out-of-control van then swerved into a telephone pole guy wire. The remaining four criminals poured out of the steaming hulk, guns a-blazing.

By now, the criminals were fairly desperate. They poured fire into Bolasky’s cruiser. Out of more than 200 rounds fired, they hit the car 47 times. Bolasky himself was struck in the left shoulder, both forearms, the left elbow, and the face.

Just at this moment, backup arrived in the form of Deputies Andy Delgado (no relation) and Charles Hille. Delgado opened up on the criminals, allowing Hille the opportunity to get Bolasky to safety. By now, the entire planet was activated. The surviving four bank robbers knew that they were running out of time.

The Getaway

While doing a pretty decent job of coordinated fire and maneuver, these four criminals commandeered a handy truck and beat a hasty retreat. One of the robbers opened fire on an orbiting police helicopter piloted by LT Jon Gibson. The aircraft was badly damaged, but Gibson was able to safely execute an emergency landing.

The criminals now had a brief head start as the responding officers tried to make sense of the chaos. As they fled the immediate area, they deployed either homemade pipe bombs or reactivated practice grenades to cover their escape. These improvised weapons were noisy but relatively ineffective.

A Brief Treatise on Pipe Bombs

It’s a fairly easy thing to obtain the makings of a pipe bomb in America, so long as you fuel it with gunpowder. Post-911, however, actual high explosives (HE) such as Kinepak, dynamite, det cord, and blasting caps are actually fairly tough to source. Gunpowder is a propellant, not an explosive. That makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of an IED (Improvised Explosive Device).

Actual HE explodes. C4 has a detonation velocity of 26,400 feet per second. This causes any steel casing in which this stuff is contained to shatter into zillions of high-velocity fragments.

By contrast, black powder burns at a rate of around 3,300 feet per second. If conflagrated within an enclosed steel pipe, such a container will burst rather than shatter. The resulting boom is impressive but not nearly as dangerous as the same contrivance using real-deal HE.

The Ambush

The criminals used their brief lead time to find a remote road and set an ambush. The first officer on-site, Deputy James Evans, rolled into the kill zone unawares. He dismounted his patrol car and returned fire. However, one of the criminals shot him in the head, killing him outright.

The next squad car contained two officers, also armed solely with a 12-gauge shotgun and a pair of .38s The Bad Guys immediately established fire superiority. However, the following cruiser contained San Bernardino County Deputy DJ McClarty. McClarty was packing an M-16 rifle, and he knew how to use it. Once he unlimbered his ArmaLite, the four murderers fled into the underbrush on foot.

The Hunt

As you might imagine, local Law Enforcement took a dim view of these four guys shooting up the countryside and killing one of their own. The following day, three of the four were tracked down and arrested without further drama. The fourth, Manuel Delgado, decided he’d sooner not go to jail. The LA County Sheriff’s SWAT team thought that was a great idea.

Sixty-five heavily armed SWAT officers surrounded Delgado’s position and gave him a chance to pack it in. When he refused to do so, they cut him down. Delgado was hit four times and succumbed on-site.

The Aftermath

The carnage among friendlies was prodigious. Glyn Bolaski recovered from his extensive wounds and went on to become an officer in the US Air Force. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after a career serving as an electronic warfare officer.

A further seven sheriff’s deputies were hit, but they all recovered. 12-year-old Robert Oglesby happened to be riding by on his bicycle and caught a round to the finger. He did fine.

In addition to the helicopter, thirty police vehicles were damaged by gunfire, as were numerous civilian homes, cars, and businesses. The three surviving thugs were convicted of 46 separate felonies and all sentenced to life without parole. They will never breathe free air again.

In the aftermath of the shootout, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department armed their deputies with Mini-14s, AR-15s, and M-16s. This trend eventually gained popularity nationwide.

Nowadays, most patrol officers maintain a black rifle in their squad car. Given the sordid nature of the threat, this is eminently wise. Despite the loss of one brave peace officer, the lessons learned from the 1980 Norco shootout ultimately improved officer training and tactics across the country.