Bank Donates Vehicle to LAPD as Officers Revisit Shootout Scene

NORTH HOLLYWOOD —  One year after he lay on the ground, blood pouring from bullet wounds to his back and hip, Officer James Zboravan returned on Saturday to the scene of the North Hollywood bank shootout.

As he does nearly every day, Zboravan mentally reviewed the outcome of the 40-minute assault-rifle attack that shook Los Angeles and its outgunned Police Department: two bank robbers killed; 11 police officers and seven civilians injured; 1,600 rounds of ammunition exchanged.

Saturday was not a day to rejoice, exactly. But it was one to commemorate.

“We can have a little celebration of life,” Zboravan said as he stood in the parking lot of the Bank of America building at 6600 Laurel Canyon Blvd. where the shootout occurred. “We were tested. We survived.”

Bank of America and top city and police officials marked the occasion with a low-key ceremony attended by Zboravan and a handful of other officers involved in the gun battle that resulted in the deaths of robbers Emil Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips Jr.

Wearing body armor and carrying a small arsenal of automatic rifles and semiautomatic handguns, the two men tried to shoot their way out of the bank, brazenly firing at police officers as television-station helicopters broadcast the mayhem live.

To show their thanks Saturday, Bank of America officials donated a $50,000 recreational vehicle that will be converted into a mobile command station for the police department’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

When it is operational next month--”We still have to rip out some of the insides,” said bank spokeswoman Linda Mueller--the motor home will have a computer, a power generator and rooms for interviewing witnesses and victims.

Police Chief Bernard Parks used the occasion to praise the professional standards of the Police Department. He also urged an end to the sale and manufacture of assault weapons.

“There’s no reason for anyone to have these types of high-powered weapons,” Parks said. “They should be banned.”

Parks’ comments came two days after Officer Martin Whitfield, who was permanently injured in the gunfight, sued the estates of the slain robbers and the manufacturers of the weapons they used.

City and police officials also criticized a federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of Matasareanu’s children, alleging that police needlessly allowed the bank robber to bleed to death in the street after his capture.

“If there was ever a time to think about and talk about legal reform, today is the day,” said T. Warren Jackson, an attorney who is vice president of the city’s Police Commission. “Some aspects of the judicial system are not in the best interests of public safety. Think about the chilling effect that this [lawsuit] has on those patrolling the streets.”

In a startling reminder of the dangers faced by police, several officers being recognized earlier in the day at a nearby Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel had to leave shortly after the service to respond to a “shots fired” call.

Police arrested a man near the corner of Victory and Lankershim boulevards for allegedly firing six rounds into the air from a 9-millimeter handgun.

“That’s just the way it is,” said Capt. Don Floyd, head of the North Hollywood Division. “It’s the nature of the beast.”