(Because Freerepublic doesn't have up arrows to click.)
Posted on 12/17/2014 3:49:17 PM PST by naturalman1975
As the Sydney siege unfolded in the Lindt cafe, a Channel Seven cameraman was watching it all through his camera lens and providing vital information and vision for police snipers.
Veteran cameraman Greg Parker remained in the network's newsroom as his colleagues were all evacuated around him.
He was accompanied by a member of the force's crack shooting squad, who asked him to keep filming as authorities assessed the movements of the crazed gunman and his treatment of the 18 hostages.
The extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary measures. Usually, in any critical situation, the media would be ushered well away from the scene but this time the two worked hand in hand.
What he saw and relayed back to the police command was as harrowing as it was stunning.
In an interview with Channel Seven, Parker said: 'One of the hardest things to see was there was three women forced to hold that flag up against the glass, and then another image of a poor guy in obvious distress with the muzzle of a shotgun, you know, in frame being pointed at his head.'
'It was the first time we'd seen a clear threatening pose, that the gun was pointed at a bloke's head who was in a very passive stance up against the glass.
As the drama began to unfold, Parker had three cameras pointed across Martin Place into the Lindt cafe, which would provide the closest possible, and clearest, view for authorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
'The guys back in the police command were then asking for specific shots, so we put on Kevlar vests and came down and relocated cameras as they needed them to be. Specifically, that window that they called "Window 4", where the flag was being sort of held up, was where the gunman was continually sort of positioning himself and putting hostages between himself and the window and himself and the door," he said.
A lot of people are asking the question as to why snipers didn't take this creature out. I think that's a reasonable question, but precise shooting like that through heavy plate glass is a risky proposition - glass will divert the bullet's path. And the target was using hostages as human shields.
'We heard a shot, he confirmed "hostage down, window two". Six seconds later, we saw the special forces guys breach.
Some people who were watching feel that the police moved too slowly in going in. What I don't think some of them realise is that the team that we could all see was only one of the teams - the indication is that another team went in significantly faster - within six seconds of the first shot being fired, they were in the room.
This is coming from the person who probably had the best view of anybody.
There's a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered.
bttt thank you for your coverage of this tragedy.
Did they have access to the walls and ceiling of the building?
If so, why didn’t they have their own video and audio, perhaps even entry?
They probably did - but a professional cameraman with cameras costing tens of thousands of dollars at his disposal (this could all be seen from the actual TV studio - it’s used for morning shows, so has a glass wall so the street outside can be seen including the Cafe - quite possibly why the creature chose the location he did seeking publicity) can get a lot of very clear detail. So they used him.
Please accept our heartfelt condolences for you and your country. What a sad day.
(Because Freerepublic doesn't have up arrows to click.)
The Morning Show, Channel 7, Monday 15th December
but it shows what I mean by saying this was visible from the studio itself.
Lots of brave people in Australia... Thanks for posting.
I bet if that occurred here the LSM would say no sorry we can’t take sides in this you know we have to be neutral in this
Here's what happens when a botched sniper shot hits heavy glass.
Good Guys shoot out Sacramento CA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXnDrdov9w
Bookmark
Thank you for that - it looks like a somewhat similar situation too - albeit one with more hostage takers. Informative.
My point was, did they have their own cameras inside the building tracking the location of everyone, and if no, why not?
Could they move up to and touch all of the walls and ceiling of the cafe?
I assume they did. But that type of detail will only normally come out at an inquest.
You obviously believe you are an expert on all of this. I’m not. I’ll wait for the actual experts who are investigating all of this to make their reports, and their case to the coroner, before I’ll start accusing men who risk their lives for others of making mistakes.
Witch hunts can develop very easily - that’s been seen a lot recently in the US, I’ve noticed, where people - including police - have been accused of getting it wrong - only to be vindicated in the end. They don’t always get it right. But I’m not going to assume they got it wrong unless that’s where the actual evidence takes us.
I think that a few tier-one teams (ST-6, Delta, SAS, HRT etc) would have taken that shot, plate glass window and all. They practice with all kinds of glass at all ranges and angles with known deflection data. They’d know the type / thickness of glass from the architectural plans. Then it’s all accessed from dope books. Bang, you’re dead.
They might have - but then you are also dealing with the issues of the human shields, and the potential of explosives accompanied by a deadman’s switch.
I don’t know if they made the right call. That will, I expect, come out over time. I’m just a bit sick of all the amateurs who seem to be looking for reasons to criticise.
Weird thing to say,it isn't true, so I don't know what your purpose is in saying it, then you go into "witch hunts".
You sound like a flake, one that wants to post threads on the killings but doesn't want any discussion of it, or any questioning of how so many hostages ended up dead or shot.
IF they had access to the building, a first rate unit could have done all kinds of things, and not just from a distance.
If this was just a cafe, then the police had all the walls and entrances for their use, it was’t as though this was trained terrorist team, inside of a commercial airliner, isolated and parked out on a runway or something. In this situation they would have been watching them through the walls with fiber optics and had multiple entrances to use, or could have used frame charges to burst into the room at the same time as the sniper shot, they may have shot him through a hole in a wall, and God knows what the real cutting edge methods are.
This seems like a pretty ideal hostage situation for the good guys, yet it resulted in big losses.
The police supposedly refused help from the Army’s Special Operations Counter Terrorist unit.
My purpose in saying it is that you seem to have made up your mind that something went wrong. I can't see why somebody would do that if they didn't think they were an expert on the matter under discussion.
You sound like a flake, one that wants to post threads on the killings but doesn't want any discussion of it, or any questioning of how so many hostages ended up dead or shot.
I'm no flake. What I am is somebody whose been on the other side of this equation. I've been involved in a situation where even though we did everything right in performing rescues, we couldn't save everybody. We did well to save as many as we did and we did everything right.
And then we had to put up with amateurs who had no clear understanding of the circumstances claiming that because people died we'd obviously failed. That we couldn't possibly have done it all right. We did - and after investigation - a lot of investigation - we were found to have done the right things and to have done them well. But for months we had to just endure the innuendos and times blatant abuse from people who were not qualified to judge. And we couldn't defend ourselves because the matter was awaiting determination by the investigation and inquest.
That's the problem - the people you are criticising aren't free to defend themselves. The investigation is likely to take weeks or months. It's an awful position to be in. As I say, I've been there. And one of the few things that helped was seeing people speaking up for the idea that there shouldn't be a rush to judgement.
I 'post on the killings' because this is a major news story that matters. But at this point, the only person who we know shares any of the blame for what happened is the scumbag who started all this. Trying to cast blame on anybody else in any way without any actual evidence or expertise and before the investigation is complete is simply, in my view, wrong, and I will say so.
I do want what happened discussed and questioned - but primarily by the experts who are qualified to do so and who are already carrying out investigations. If they find there were deficiencies in what happened, that's a very different thing from somebody without expertise doing so. But my main problem is you have gone beyond just asking questions. I've seen you insisting something must have gone wrong ("Mistakes were obviously made, there is no question about that, we have dead hostages to bury."). That's a logical fallacy. Everything can go right and people can still die, because there are all sorts of variables involved. I've also seen you repeat at least one rumour that I have information is incorrect - because while I'm not an expert either, I know some people who are. There's all sort of nonsense circulating about things that supposedly happened that are not true. Some of it may even be deliberate in order to conceal certain capabilities.
You're not just asking questions - you're making judgements you are not qualified to make. And there are men who put their lives on the line who deserve the benefit of the doubt until somebody can show they did something wrong.
That’s funny, it sounds like you are the one claiming to be an expert, since you insist that it is wrong to think that something went wrong, although two hostages were killed, and another four wounded.
Then you proceed to pretend that you are in actuality an expert, although in other posts you say you aren’t.
When a single gunman, in a cafe like this with the police having everything on their side, results in 6 hostages with gunshot wounds and two of those dead, something went wrong.
Quit being hall monitor and allow us to discuss this hostage taking crime and SWAT operation, and it seems like they turned down help from better “experts”.
This situation was not so incredibly complicated on the scale of hostage taking, that so many wounded and dead, are acceptable.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.