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An LAPD SWAT officer reportedly took cover with a World War II-era German MP40 during the May 17, 1974, shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army in South Los Angeles, according to reports that the newly formed SWAT unit drew seized weapons from the department's property room as officers faced SLA members armed with automatic weapons.

The shootout itself remains one of the most intense firefights in LAPD history. After a tip from a neighbor about a group playing with automatic weapons inside a small house on East 54th Street, roughly 400 to 500 officers surrounded the location. Rather than surrender, SLA members opened fire, and what followed was close to an hour of continuous gunfire, with thousands of rounds exchanged in total. Tear gas used during the standoff sparked a fire that ultimately burned the house down, and when it was over, six SLA members were dead, including leader Donald DeFreeze.

The battle came just months after the group's most infamous act, the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, and it effectively broke the organization's back as a functioning militant group. It's also remembered as a genuine early test for LAPD SWAT itself, a unit still finding its footing barely five years after its 1967 founding, facing an enemy with more firepower on hand than the department had originally equipped its officers to counter, which is exactly the kind of situation that would explain reaching for whatever was available, seized weapons included, if that detail holds up.