officers may have shot Orlando club patrons

a reply to: Annee

I want to say that they started blowing holes in a concrete (cinderblock looking) wall to get some hostages out and that's when they were confronted by jerkface and probably just opened the bleep up on him (and probably a lot at the same time) which explains why it looks like someone sprayed the wall.

Whole thing breaks my heart. Did you see Anderson Cooper choking up reading the list of names? Messed me up for a few minutes.

originally posted by: Domo1
a reply to: Annee

I want to say that they started blowing holes in a concrete (cinderblock looking) wall to get some hostages out and that's when they were confronted by jerkface and probably just opened the bleep up on him (and probably a lot at the same time) which explains why it looks like someone sprayed the wall.

Whole thing breaks my heart. Did you see Anderson Cooper choking up reading the list of names? Messed me up for a few minutes.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

I read about Anderson Cooper reading the names. Haven't been able to bring myself to listen to it yet.

a reply to: Xcathdra

of course it's way too early to tell,and we will probably never know who shot who when. My idea is,and has been,that in a tactical situation,one cop is the designated shooter,the rest are backup,not to fire til absolutely needed.Maybe fire high cover shots,but not randomly into a crowd.Unless the designated cop can't get a clean shot,or is shot,nobody else fires.
We had a situation here in Phx years ago,a guy naked on a shed roof throwing rocks at cops,they opened fire with pistols and shotguns.Ended up with 93 holes in him,

originally posted by: Konduit
Judging the audio of the SWAT team entering the building, if he had hostages around him I wouldn't be surprised if innocent bystanders got caught in the hail of gunfire.

Hostage rescue is spectacularly difficult. SF used to have somewhat undocumented HRT teams, but had similar issues - it's damned near impossible to enter a building with a randomly milling panicked crowd and fire at the shooter(s) without also hitting the people in the background.

That's why you ended up with teams that do nothing but train for this situation, all the time. Delta's HRT fire some absolutely ungodly number of rounds per operator in training per year, to the point that you can spot them by the calluses on the webs of their right thumbs (ha!).

Local LEOs are not going to be able to do the job without collateral damage. Hell, they can't even manage fire control outside a building - fleeing hostages are regularly gunned down by adrenaline soaked LEOs on the building perimeter. You get them inside a building with gunfire going on, they're going to shoot whatever's moving in order to go home at the end of the shift.

No local SWAT can muster the money and manpower to have a real HRT like FBI, Delta or Navy can. Or the caliber of people.

a reply to: blkcwbyhat
a reply to: Domo1

My point was unintended casualties are a very real possibility and to think that police encounters like this should go smoothly and perfectly is insane.

Police procedure used to be initial responding officers would secure the perimeter and wait for a specialized unit to respond. That procedure came to an end with the North Hollywood Shootout and the Columbine High School shooting. North Hollywood saw the introduction of patrol rifles in squad cars and Columbine saw the shift to allowing the first officers on scene, regardless of their jurisdiction, to engage the suspect immediately.

Immediate engagement is designed to stop the loss of life that could occur by waiting for a specialized unit. When you come into a situation where there are a lot of civilians and you have no clear definitive description of the suspect it must be assumed any of the civilians present could be the suspect. It must be assumed they are not acting alone until you can secure the scene.

Unlike the military law enforcement does not fall under the acceptable losses mindset. During all my training, initial and continuing, when you miss a target you are told you just killed an 80 year old grandmother. We must be cognizant of whats going on beyond the suspect we are going to engage. One can never account for ricochets, bullets penetrating walls, let alone whats on the other side of the wall you cant see, to civilians popping up in the field of fire and not aware of their surroundings because of whats going on around them.

As for one person being designated a shooter its a possibility however not always practical. If the designated shooter does not have a clear shot and other officers do, then those officers should be allowed to engage. Secondly when you have one shooter their position becomes targetable.

The top priority is to stop the threat so those trapped can escape and those wounded can get medical attention.

Any loss of life is sad and should be avoided at all costs however given the situations perfection is not always possible.
Thats the point im trying to make.

a reply to: blkcwbyhat

Problem 1: time wasted playing Rock Paper Scissors for who the "designated shooter" is.

Problem 2: "high fire cover shots?" The hell are those? In a situation where people can be hit by stray rounds, you want to intentionally introduce more stray rounds into the picture?

And so on. An active shooter situation with some 300 innocents caught in it is going to be a problem for everybody except the shooter. Monday morning quarterbacking is all well and good until it comes to practical application.

a reply to: Shamrock6

You guys are sort of between a rock and a hard place.

If the first responder is a beat cop and has to engage, I don't mean to be derogatory but I have seen a lot of traffic/beat cops that have less than stellar pistol quals and a lot of "home at the end of my shift" going in, not to mention that I'm not sure all of them have armor or wear it if they do.

I'm not saying that's the case across the board. If you're a recent Marine you no doubt DO have mad sidearm skills and are more likely to maintain them. But I had some surprising moments doing remedial pistol teaching with a sort of "all I want to do is make my quals" attitude among the students that wasn't just one or two, and some of those guys were frankly sort of dangerous on the range.

I'm not real sure "force the first guy on the scene into the scrum" is a great policy. I'm sure it looks better but I'm not sure the outcomes are necessarily better.

Can you wait for the swat team to come from the other side of the county, maybe not. If the shooter is a 'take hostages' sort, sure. If he's a shoot em all and let Allah sort 'em out sort then no.

Not only that, most of you guys are armed with sidearms that are going through every piece of sheetrock and maybe multiple bystanders. I'm not sure if you're allowed to carry frag ammo. But I suspect you don't even if you can.

Maybe a possible partial solution would be to train a LOT of the force for accurate fire in a scrum and to carry frag mags. Not all of them would be willing to be semi-SWAT but you can train Israeli Method and improve nearly anyone who's got some gumption. So maybe you don't wait for SWAT but only qualed shooters could enter, but maybe 1/4 of the force is able to pass. For some more pay, to make up for putting several thousand accurate rounds downfield a month. There are better inside active shooting ranges, training methods too, than what you're probably used to. It's money and it's an asspain, but it might be worth having a group of guys you could get onscene in 15 minutes or so in an Orlando sized city by distributing them around as 'hypercops', if you would.

No place is going to be able to deploy a Delta style HRT. Maybe NYPD and LA, but even then, I don't know. Those guys, once the team quals on the course, use each other as test dummies. The 'house' is set up with a new floor plan every so often. And everyone gets to sit in the unfamiliar test setup as the 'hostage', while their buddies do dynamic entries and shoot the perp dummies, which are often on the couch with the live guy. And while the entry is going on, the black hats can shoot back at you - some of the dummies have paintball guns with remote controls - and the dummies can pop smoke or teargas. There are also traps.

That's pretty hardcore. I'm not sure how many cops would be willing to sit there while their SWAT teams kill the perps to their left and right with live ammo, strobes and teargas going off and some sadistic bastard shooting you in the face with paintballs and blowing boat horns.

But maybe some subset of that would be good training - maybe without live ammo.

Heck, maybe it's a new industry for retiring bravos and charlies.