The North Hollywood shootout and the militarization of police
As part of the current argument about what’s right and wrong with US police forces, a trend that often comes up is the greater “militarization” of police, which is seen by many people as part of the problem.
Does anyone over 60 ever remember seeing a policeman wearing a ballistic vest? And nowadays, does anyone remember seeing an LEO without a ballistic vest? Or think back to armament 60 years ago and now: LEOs when I was young had a revolver, and possibly a shotgun in the vehicle. Now the LEO carries an autoloading pistol with a magazine holding 13-21 cartridges, and two extra magazines on his/her belt, along with a military long gun in the car, not to forget helmets and other accoutrements from the battlefield.
I am the first to admit, this is in response to a change in the bad guys’ change in armament: they are also carrying autoloaders with high capacity magazines and ballistic vests. We are also seeing more armored vehicles being used by law enforcement, and cops are able to tap into information data bases from their vehicle and communicate from their person to headquarters.
So the equation has changed on both sides. And legislatures appear more and more ready to handicap the police and allow law-breakers to go Scott-free when they’re apprehended.
I’m far from an expert on policing or weaponry. But I remember this incident in California in 1997 as a turning point. It left the two perps dead and twelve police officers plus eight bystanders injured, and it certainly got my attention:
At 9:17 am, Phillips and Mitasareanu entered and robbed Bank of America’s North Hollywood branch. The two robbers were confronted by LAPD officers when they exited the bank and a shootout between the officers and robbers ensued…
Phillips and Mitasareanu are believed to have robbed at least two other banks using similar methods by taking control of the entire bank and firing weapons illegally modified to enable fully-automatic fire, chambered for intermediate cartridges for control and entry past “bullet-proof” security doors, and were suspects in two armored car robberies.
Standard issue sidearms carried by most local patrol officers at the time were 9mm pistols or .38 Special revolvers; some patrol cars were also equipped with a 12-gauge shotgun. Phillips and Mitasareanu carried Norinco Type 56 S-1s (an AK-47 variant), a Bushmaster XM-15 Dissipator with high-capacity drum magazine, and a Heckler & Koch HK91 rifle, all of which had been illegally modified to enable fully-automatic fire, as well as a Beretta 92FS pistol. The robbers wore mostly homemade, heavy plated body armor which successfully protected them from handgun rounds and shotgun pellets fired by the responding officers. A police SWAT team eventually arrived bearing sufficient firepower, and they commandeered an armored car to evacuate the wounded. Several officers also appropriated AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles from a nearby firearms dealer. The incident sparked debate on the need for patrol officers to upgrade their firepower in preparation for similar situations in the future.
You bet it did.
Please read the whole thing. I recall it being covered in real time, and being horrified at the amount of firepower and protection the perps had.
Also this:
The shootout contributed to motivating the arming of rank-and-file police officers in Los Angeles and nationwide with semi-automatic, selective fire, and automatic rifles.
The ineffectiveness of the standard police patrol pistols and shotguns in penetrating the robbers’ body armor led to a trend in the United States toward arming selected police patrol officers, not just SWAT teams, with heavier firepower such as semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles. SWAT teams, whose close quarters battle weaponry usually consisted of submachine guns that fired pistol cartridges such as the Heckler & Koch MP5, began supplementing them with AR-15 rifles and carbines.
Seven months after the incident, the Department of Defense gave 600 surplus M16s to the LAPD, which were issued to each patrol sergeant; LAPD patrol vehicles now carry AR-15s as standard issue, with bullet-resistant Kevlar plating in their doors as well.[42] Also as a result of this incident LAPD authorized its officers to carry .45 ACP caliber semiautomatic pistols as duty sidearms, specifically the Smith & Wesson Models 4506 and 4566. Prior to 1997, only LAPD SWAT officers were authorized to carry .45 ACP caliber pistols, specifically the Model 1911A1 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol.
Times were different back then in other ways, as well. For example, “The year following the shootout, 18 officers of the LAPD received the departmental Medal of Valor for their actions, and met President Bill Clinton.” You may recall that Clinton was a Democrat.
Becoming a police officer should not entail signing up for suicide by perp. Obviously, though, most encounters between police and civilians are not going to involve this sort of shootout – at least, not yet. However, police have become understandably wary and police forces have felt the need to prepare to meet the possible worst-case threats.
The “defund the police” advocates have responded in a profoundly illogical and destructive manner, but they have their own agenda which is political and deeply leftist and radical. I don’t have a solution; but I know that defunding the police is not it.
[NOTE: For those too young to remember incidents such as North Hollywood – and that represents a sizeable portion of the voting public – it may seem as though the police just woke up one day and decided to escalate things. And the left has an investment in letting them (or helping them) think that way.]
It’s always hard to predict the future, but I would not be surprised, if, 20, 30 years from now folks looking back at this time will see this: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521
as the most significant news item of the day.
*emphasis mine
I was going to mention that 1997 shootout in my comment, as well as the 1996 Texas Tower shooting by Charles Whitman — when police (I have talked to authorities in Austin about this) realized they had no way to “reach out and touch” a shooter armed with a rifle and hiding in a tower. The Texas Tower shootout is credited with being the genesis of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams. No LEO in Austin had a rifle capable of reaching Whitman in the tower. IIRC, one of the policemen involved in the shootout finally went home and retrieved a personal deer hunting rifle and neutralized Whitman. Police departments across the country began to develop their own SWAT teams after that.
Shootouts like the 1996 and 1997 events are said to have been instrumental in the development and issuing of .40 caliber S&W weapons for LEOs. This caliber is more powerful than the .357 magnums that were the “heavy” weapon of police departments, but didn’t have quite as much recoil as the .45 ACP that was long the standard sidearm of the U.S. military. The FBI is credited with encouraging the development of the .40 S&W because lighter-frame FBI agents were not comfortable shooting the .45 ACP.
I have heard it was the Obama administration that pushed the transfer of Armored Personnel Carriers and other military equipment to police departments.
Regarding police militarization,
It seems like the federal government and defense contractors also found it very lucrative to step up the level of equipment local forces have. There was a lot of military buildup in the early 2000’s and a lot of offloading older equipment to police forces as well as cities using budget dollars to buy new.
Policing and combat differ in a number of ways. Some are similar. Cops are in the position of regulars in a guerilla war…don’t know who the enemy is until….
Additionally, cops are required to let the folks get close. Or, to put it another way, you can’t check a guy’s license and registration from behind a stone wall fifty yards away.
A 22lr will certainly cause a guy to sit down and consider his sins…if he’s in the middle of a large, empty field with nobody in sight. And another round, if he’s still holding a gun should take care of things.
But some hopped-up clown who’s been in prison where he passed the time lifting weights starts at you from nine feet away is a different proposition altogether. You basically have to kill him to stop him. Even a heart shot will leave him a couple of seconds of effort.
Cops are not allowed to “fight” during an arrest. They must “restrain” which combines techniques that look like judo and wrestling. Can’t gouge eyes. Side kick to the knee…maybe. The perp is not so restricted. The famous Rodney King beating looked bad but it was lateral strikes across the large muscles of the back. Hurts like hell, but his injury came from earlier fighting with the cops. He could have been killed with one baton strike…shoved the end into the neck just below the skull. But he wasn’t because that wasn’t the goal and it would not have been allowed by department regs.
Point is, when it gets real for a cop, it usually busts loose close to arm’s length and the armament must take that into account.
Or, if the shooting is at, say, twenty yards, you have to hit a guy pretty hard in a couple of small places to stop him pulling the trigger on a pistol, any one round of which might hit you between the eyes. So you have to empty the mag.
As a kid, living in a NYC gang neighborhood in the 60’s – 80’s, I only ever saw one tiny gun, a Saturday night special. My neighbors, members of the Latin Lords, as they called themselves, showed it to me in the palm of their hand, whispering in awestruck tones. But, I don’t know what they were going to do with it, they asked me to babysit their baby cousin as they rushed off to convene a meeting down the street.
A retired ICE agent I met recently, who also grew up in the same area, said that gangs back then were not the same as they are now.
When I was 60, some 70+ years ago, our police chief wore one. Smallish town, too.
Esther,
Similar experience to mine. Gang fights mostly involved bats, chains and knives. My favorite memory of interactions with the gangs in my neighborhood was when a friend and I (we were 10?) made kool-aid and popcorn and started walking through our neighborhood to raise money for “Jerry’s Kids.” About 10 minutes into it a guy fleeing a gang fight, and dripping in blood, ran up, grabbed our jug, took a big swig of kool-aid, thanked us and ran off. All our concessions were covered in blood so we had to return home, dejected. Sorry Jerry!
I don’t think the gangs back then were much into commerce, if at all. They were fighting (typically ethnic based), social clubs. Maybe that’s why there was so much less death? No real money to be made?
(They never seemed to have any trouble getting girls.)
“I have heard it was the Obama administration that pushed the transfer of Armored Personnel Carriers and other military equipment to police departments.”
The Obama Admin seems to have had a plan to distribute military capabilities everywhere possible (upgrade police, buy ammo for federal departments you would never have guessed had a military arm). Perhaps it was intended as a counter balance if the US military supported the People and Constitution in an eventual hot civil war. Lefties may not be so concerned about that anymore as the armed forces have visibly moved in an SJW direction.
https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/view-discuss/ned-kellys-armour
Ned Kelly did what those guys did…only it was 1880.
Keep in mind that effective, lightweight, cost-effective body armor is a fairly recent innovation, made possible by advances in materials (Kevlar fibers, to be specific). I don’t think these were produced in volume until the 80s. So maybe it’s reasonable to claim that effective body armor wasn’t really viable until the 90s.
Also keep in mind that the old standby .38 revolver and the shotgun are close quarter weapons. It’s very difficult to hit anything with a short-barrel .38 beyond a couple of car lengths, and the effectiveness of a shotgun drops dramatically with distance.
So, if you need to “reach out and touch” a target beyond that distance, an AR works well; it’s light and durable, recoil is very modest, and will still be effective out to 150 yards and beyond.
As to semiauto pistols with “high capacity magazines”, just watch the recent video of the Michigan deputy who had to stop a knife attacker who charged her. It took 11 rounds to get the job done. (I think a lot of them were misses under immense pressure, but it still took that many to get it done). Then tell me she should be limited to a 6 shot revolver?
Now, a topic shift…
A lot of folks did get really concerned about surplus APCs and MRAPs being pushed onto police departments over the last 20 years; the logic being that this kind of equipment becomes an incentive in and of itself to use excess force. I can see a place for some of it, but, how much? If you roll into a scene with an APC and a fully automatic 50 cal., you don’t appear to be “defensive”.
Esther; Rufus:
“West Side Story” type gangs.
In what way is having armored vehicles an “escalation” or a threat to anybody? If the police did not care about killing criminals, they could get by with a lot less in the way of protection.
Rufus,
As far as being a girl, I noticed early, getting entangled and pregnant meant I would be trapped. But, at the same time, it was necessary to maintain a constant familiar presence and an ambiguous appearance.
Neo, yes! Very like that. But with more crime, drugs and rape than the movie.
Sam L. I’m sure a lot of readers here would like to know he secret of your longevity!
Law enforcement needs a better Planned Perp (PP) protocol that will mitigate collateral damage and other progressive outcomes (e.g. “protests”).
Also, in light of Floyd’s fentanyl use and Wuhan virus+ status, what is the appropriate law enforcement protocol, and who approves it? Ellison? Ellison? Ellison?
In flyover, this is all alien to me. A murder in a city miles away is a topic of discussion of 24 hours. Perhaps you all are living in a wrong/bad place. Think about it.BTW, deputies still carry revolvers here.
Esther:
You may recall that in West Side Story there is a sort-of-rape that occurs when Anita goes to speak to the Jets at Maria’s behest, after the rumble. It’s portrayed as a mock-rape. When I saw it onstage at the age of 10 or so it was plenty frightening and creepy, let me tell you, and although I understood it was ambiguous I also understood it was a stand-in for real rape (or as Whoopi Goldberg later called it, “rape-rape”). I’m less familiar with the movie, but this was the stage play, long long ago.
Replying to LTEC @4:14
Tactically, it’s not a threat.
But to uncertain nearby residents, 3 local hoods standing in front of an APC brandishing an M2 starts to look a lot like the guy standing in front of the tank in Tianemen square. Psychologically, then the cops become bad guys.
Optics matter?
A small clarification, the U. of Texas ‘Tower’ shooting was on August 1, 1966 and there were several people, some students who had deer rifles along with police and helped keep the shooter occupied a bit until the police were able to get to him and kill him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
That was a sorry sad day in Texas and I was married in the Catholic Student Center four weeks later where one of the students had been shot on the front step over 150 yards from the ‘Tower’. I was in the Army, on leave, getting married at that time so I remember 1966.
The Left is promoting the defunding of the police and/or their replacement by kinder, gentler “social worker” types. Especially for domestic disturbance calls.
In what way is having armored vehicles an “escalation” or a threat to anybody?
When they roll up on your house at 4:30am because some goof mistyped the address for the no-knock warrant? or because a confidential informant gave them your address because the CI has a beef with you?
Additionally, they’re a threat long-term to the well being of the taxpayers. Operating expenditures are a bear when gas mileage is measured in gallons/mile. Keeping track of them can be an issue. For instance:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2740921/Arkansas-police-department-loses-Humvee-week-failing-notice-stolen-using-spare-parts-SECOND-Humvee.html
Meal Team 6 was seen in Odessa, Texas. They brought an MRAP to the party.
https://twitter.com/JuYeonKimTV/status/1257473262881255425
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
OldTexan,
That is a fascinating story about your wedding location and day!
Regarding the gangs in my neighborhood, years later, as I read more about gang violence occurring in cities I wondered why no gang ever tried to recruit me, or my friends. I had friends who were in gangs, and one friend of a friend who got recruited by the mob, but it all seemed very voluntary. I don’t think they wanted you unless you wanted to join. However, for decades now that seems to have changed and young people are under tremendous pressure to join.
There was peer pressure. My father, who grew up nearby, was in a gang when he was in school, and I’m sure he did it to belong to something, but the gangs I interacted with seemed honorable in that they did not seem to want to push boys into joining.
It was fairly “Jets and Sharky.”
When I was in the academy, the instructors spoke of the three major incidents that changed police tactics. Two have already been mentioned here:
-1966 Texas Tower shooting (and stabbing: Whitman stabbed his wife and mother to death before the rampage)
-1997 North Hollywood: I didn’t read Neo’s link, only her captions, but I seem to remember that the shooters in North Hollywood were initially injured by shooting them in the feet, through their boots (as they almost had sufficient concealment), their feet were visible*), and when they went down to the ground level injured, the officers were able to shoot them and kill them.
The third incident was the 1986 Miami Shoot Out:
The Miami Shoot Out is generally thought to be the turning point where law enforcement began the change from revolvers to semi-automatic handguns. I believe the FBI also mandated a change to a higher caliber round. But the big issue was that a magazine is easier to handle under fire than reloading a revolver.
*Concealment vs Cover: Cover is generally protection from firearms behind something that has ballistic integrity. A concrete barricade, etc. As opposed to Concealment which only hides you from sight but does not protect you from bullets. Like a sheetrock wall. Generally most cars, which I believe the North Hollywood shooters were hiding behind are concealment, not cover. Sometimes the engine block is cover but not always.
I aslways thought that the Obama Administration saw the “militarization” of police as preferrable to prosecution/imprisonment due to the optics. Obama, and Co got to avoid the useful “therapy” of quarantine through prison of the violent players, while they got to blame the Po-Po and the White population for racism. Chicago police, as one example, seize masses of firearms “on the street”, but there is rarely a prosecution of a “prohibited person” found with a firearm.
Warrant service is nasty work. I’d want a helmet, shield, and lots of armed friends going through the door with me. Plus, an LEO behind a shield is under less pressure when it comes to the “Shoot!?” decision. When there are all the shouts and blinky lights, I want everyone to be as calm as possible.
IRA Darth Aggie:
When anyone can SWAT you it won’t matter much how they get to your front door. Would you prefer the police to arrive on pogo sticks or skate boards?
If a loon decides to clad his D7 (it wasn’t a D7 BTW) in armor plate and take out half the town your local police are not going to have much luck even if they have a surplus military vehicle. Happened in Colorado. There was another case where a civilian got access to a M-60 IIRC (an actual tank) and was running down the interstate in southern CA until a LEO killed him with a pistol shooting trough the open driver’s hatch.
A HUMVEE is not a MRAP not a surplus M113 nor a Cadillac Gage V100 Commando.
John Dillinger survived being shot by police by wearing body armor at one point. Bonnie and Clyde took on a government armored car with automatic weapons stolen from the government. The guys that got the two of them used automatic weapons. The first LEO live fire demonstration I ever saw was in 1973 by a FBI agent using a 1911 and then a Tommy gun.
I recall seeing police with what looked like military rifles in Europe in the 60’s, and the road to Berlin was lined with battle rifle armed guards. I remember being shocked at the time, it was all new to me.
I remember when all politicians ran for office on a platform of being tough on crime. It was a box that you were required to tic in order to get elected.
I saw FBI agent Jelly Bryce give a gun safety, shooting demonstration in 1956 at a 4-H Summer Camp, he was shooting the various spots out of playing cards, shooting coins out of the air with a .38 and ending with a Thompson Submachine Gun shooting tracers spelling out 4-H in the sky. I helped him clean up afterwards and kept some of the brass, I wish I had kept track of it because Jelly Bryce was one of the FBI shot to kill guys in the 1930’s. My dad was his football coach in high school so it was fun talking to him, he remained friends with my dad all his life.
If anyone has the time to read a first hand account of the Texas Tower event this was written and published in 1986 my by neighbor here in the Texas Hill Country, Bill Helmer who is an author, now a little old man living in a retirement situation where I pick him up from time to time and take him to the library. We used to drink coffee in the morning and he had some good stories and lots of files about the 1930’s gangsters with published books and then his stint as the law editor for Playboy Magazine in Chicago for a number of years. He saved one person’s life that day, August 1, 1966.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-madman-on-the-tower/
to John Guilfoyle & Fractal Rabbit:
“The virtual tour of the most complete version of Kelly’s armour since it was worn at the 1880 siege of Glenrowan reveals that, ironically, Ned Kelly was captured when police fired at his unprotected legs.”
The recreated armor looks a lot like a prototype for The Tin Woodman.
I remember watching the close helicopter broadcast when one of those murderous scumbags took a police round through his well deserving head and the ‘whoosh” of blood and brain matter which instantly followed. YES…!!! YES…!!!
The bad guys got more and more agressive deadly for police and for publice.
In history of humanity the bad guys if they get the harsh action from the law for thier bad action then you not get more agressive bad guys.
Here we have human right and we should treat bad guys as human whatever they did so bad they have thier own cell in preson gym, internet food paid dollar …..etc
To limit and minimize bad guys you need to b harsher not buy weipen and protictive bodyparts for police with more weapons and cars to stop this race btetween police arm and bad guys arm go bak and use hung any bad guys that his crime big and cussed killing police and civilians.
This only way to get rid of those criminal and thier ilks
The left and their lack of wanting to stop the drug trade created people with several million dollars in one location or more, and no way to protect it… that led to the crooks overarming themselves in ways that made them strong enough for each other but too strong for the police… The government WANTED this… especially the deep state… i could point to tons of evidence as to that being true because failure to act on that evidence meant that they were allowing things to happen.
here are TWO examples.
Porous borders that allowed drugs made in other countries to be brought into the united states and laws which weakened the ability to act upon and do something about it. (to this day you can watch videos of people coming across the Mexican border with backpacks of drugs or building mile long air vented tunnels with transport cars in them)… If you cant close the border you cant stop the drugs…
Methyl Ethyl Ketone (Butanone) – a necessary ingredient in the refining of coca leaves into coca paste and then cocaine…
How Europe keeps the cocaine cartels in business 11 August 1990
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717290-700-how-europe-keeps-the-cocaine-cartels-in-business/
Extracting pure cocaine from raw coca leaves requires a variety of solvents,
such as methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), acetone, ethyl ether or potassium permanganate.
In 1988, Colombia imported MEK worth $5.7 million (about Pounds sterling
3 million), from the US. This was more than 20 per cent of all exports of
the solvents from the country. Drug enforcement officials estimate that
between 50 and 90 per cent of these chemicals end up in the cocaine industry.
Last October, the agency began to crack down on shipments of eight ‘sensitive’ chemicals that can be used to produce cocaine. Three out of every four Colombian customers were banned from buying the chemicals in the US. Exports to Colombia fell by more than half, from 7933 tonnes in 1988 to an estimated 3200 tonnes this year.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717290-700-how-europe-keeps-the-cocaine-cartels-in-business/#ixzz6SZm6UDht
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The “crack epidemic” in the United States was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States between the early 1980s and the early 1990s
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
and the crack cocaine came on top of the feminist free love left leaning hippy culture which really got started by leadership in the 1930s… but it led to the do nothing democrats and the neutered republicans who were losing votes because they wanted to act on the drug trade and stop it… “just say no”, etc… which required going into the slums… but the slums had a way of making money, which they lost after feminism made sure that momma kicked poppa out of the house in the black neighborhoods to get a check and not have to do the harder thing and integrate with a man and make things work…
everything is connected and you can note that every one of these chess board moves had the left and the help externally and even were repeated magically in each of the countries “under attack”, going after the moral basis of the people and rotting out each generation more and more till you have kids that hate the US tearing it down to replace it with what? a fantasy that is more horrible than they are willing to believe or even contemplate and so to them must be fantasy…
really? well right now china is doing to the uighers what Hitler was doing to the Jews that the left is doing to what group for 30 years of below replacement births… you think that if these families that ended up not having children had kids things today would be the way they are with people who were “imported” to hide the decline and who had no natural love of there homeland? who fights for home? men from broken families who had their kids taken away?
no one wanted to take a look at this as a whole tapestry of cloth, but wanted to discuss things in isolation… ie. never ever freaking connect the dots… never learn the history… forget the people that taught you to behave that way… as if they never existed and the behavior is natural… oh and the last is best, find some excuse, or concept or lie to yourself that this would be the right course and pretend you did something towards it changing by discussing things separately… which did no such thing… by doing so, you were as blind as the scientists in a room feeling an elephant and trying to describe the whole
I was never a LEO. But during my 20 years as a Naval intel I filled billets that required extensive weapons and tactical training. I qualified with every weapon in the Navy’s small arms inventory and at one point in my career ran and managed the largest small arms training program and ammo account in the Pacific Fleet.
Don’t be too impressed the last point is like being able to legitimately claim the title of best ice hockey player in Tahiti.
I dont claim to be an expert. But I am more than familiar with the shotgun as used by USN/USMC security forces.
The shotguns the LAPD officers had in their squad cars were more than adequate to put an end to the Hollywood shootout. The problem was the ammo. The standard military/LE issue 9 pellet 00 buck load limits the 12 ga. to 25 yards at best. Even that’s a stretch. No way even plated pellets will penetrate body armor.
Either Foster or Brenneke slugs can (with careful load selection) turn the shotgun into 100 yard weapons which would have been more than adequate. Unfortunately to function with any degree of accuracy it has to be made from very soft lead alloy. Fine for deer, the intended target, but too soft to penetrate body armor which always beyond the design parameters. Who envisioned kevlar in the 1930s?
The Brenneke slug was first produced in 1898 Germany. It like the Foster slug is a 1oz chunk of metal. You dont want to stand in front of either slug. It also wasn’t designed with kevlar in mind. But due to its 2 part construction method it happily can penetrate body armor. The shape of the slug is more like a bullet and can be and usually is made from a harder alloy.
They different weapon. 3, 5 packs of Brenneke slugs per car could have changed everything. Could have, assuming these officers had learned to aim their shotguns. It’s a Hollywood myth that you can just wave a shotgun in the general direction of you adversary and be guaranteed a hit. Combat shotguns have to be aimed no matter if you’re using buckshot or slug loads.
And also assuming the barrels aren’t stuffed with chewing gum and candy wrappers.
You’d be surprised. Or not.
It’s the Foster slug that has to be made from a soft lead alloy. It is slightly smaller than bore diameter. So it has a hollow “skirt” that expands to fit the bore when filled with propellant gases the gun is fired. But then it has to squeeze down to smaller than bore size to pass through the tightest choke any manufacturer thought was effective and any gun owner decides to use. It has to be safe in any shotgun and can’t rupture the barrel under any circumstance. Only a soft alloy can meet these demands, which is fine for hunting but not critters wearing body armor.
The Brenneke slug has a wad originally attached to the slug with a wood screw. The 19th century tech worked fine. Depending on the era the wad was made of cardboard, fiber, or plastic. In any case it was the wad that did all the expanding and contracting. The slug itself, like the Foster slightly smaller than bore size, doesn’t have to deform to make it down the barrel and out the muzzle. So a harder alloy is typical. Which is a major reason the Brenneke slug can defeat body armor while the Foster can’t.