Posted on 10/02/2017 4:02:52 PM PDT by Hebrews 11:6
My assumptions:
(1) The shooter's location should have been immediately apparent to LEOs.
(2) The volume of shooting and the mass casualties should have given LEOs an extreme sense of both importance and urgency.
A 72-minute response-time does not correlate with either (1) or (2).
In my absence of information, it smacks of LEO commanders carefully planning a tactical approach, getting all the details right before proceeding, when in hindsight what was needed was a quick rush of the door--in seven minutes, not seventy-two. What am I missing?
The Las Vegas Police Dept has a new $10 M dollar helicopter but only for search and rescure. Evidently they haven`t figured out how to fly it at night using FLIR/IR Thermo to take out a sniper. Maybe next year. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/las-vegas-police-unveil-new-9-6m-helicopter/
He rented two nonadjacent rooms.
“”Listening to the video, there is a lenghty gap between the heavy bursts”
Too bad the concert goers didn’t recognize full auto and get out of the free fire zone during the lulls.
I will never forget those police cowering behind a fire truck with the fireman driving the truck setting behind a big window clearly open to fire. Yep mighty brave fireman, police not so much.
snip
About 10pm: Paddock smashes out two windows on the 32nd floor with a hammer-like implement and opens fire with his arsenal of at least 19 weapons - including fully automatic weapons.
10.08pm: First phone call to police that shots had been fired at the festival outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
10.38pm: Police in Las Vegas say that they are 'investigating reports of an active shooter' near to the Mandalay Bay.
11.08pm: Las Vegas police confirm they have shut down a portion of The Strip
11.20pm: SWAT teams storm the 32nd floor room that Stephen Paddock was firing from. They gained entry using flashbangs designed to stun the shooter. Officers entered the room and found he had taken his own life. Seventy-two minutes elapsed from the first 911 call to Paddock being found dead.
What would be accomplished by the dead ex-military policeman other than to soften the landing for dead one behind him? The wasn't a shotgun... it was an automatic weapon, perfectly suited for warding off a massed attack.
They use breaching rounds today.
The last time I had a Vegas suite of two rooms was in the 1990s. It was EASILY big enough to have had that many windows. $600 a night . . . and I wasn’t paying for it. Awesome!
The window on the left looks onto the stage of the concert. The window on the right looked onto the crowd area more. This is what every media report about the windows says and reports onsite said as well.
I know you’re right, it should have taken 7 minutes to shut the shooter off. Where is a Dirty Harry when you need him? We’ve all read about cops running away from a gunfight and it’s just a damn shame.
My agency has been trained in MACTAC, like thousands of other officers. It was so close to the MOUT training that I received in the Army that it could have been lifted straight from the pages.
Were talking suppressive fire, IMT (individual movement techniques across open areas), dynamic entries, the whole bit. And this is the average road officer learning this stuff.
This all came down after Mumbai and Beslan.
However, during refresher training it is stressed move to the gunfire, engage the suspect and neutralize him. Even if by yourself, even if outgunned. The point is to fix him, and make him change his train of thought of killing innocents to defending himself from you.
Of course, as Murphy’s Law of Combat would have it, no great plan survives first contact with the enemy and your motivations may change when all you have is a service pistol with 45 to 60 rounds versus a guy with untold automatic weapons and amounts of ammo.
Look here and you’ll see that his suite was as big as a large one bedroom apartment: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4942590/Witnesses-Las-Vegas-gunman-left-59-dead.html
You’re first assumption is incorrect. There were reports of three shooters. Mandalay Bay was noted by an officer as where some of the shots were coming from. They also thought shots were coming from “Ali Baba” (whatever that is) and there were reports of shots fired in the concert arena itself.
From listening to the police broadcast there seemed to be a great sense of urgency.
Lastly, the shooting stopped after 15 - 18 minutes.
I hear what you’re saying and I don’t really question or object to their tactics often, but as a former Marine, it some times makes me chuckle. Remember, Marines were clearing a house every 15 minutes, on average, in Fallujah.
We had a swat team here wait two days to go into an apartment to go after a guy who had allegedly fired an arrow into a car only to find out no one was not home. A similar incident a few months ago over a domestic dispute. 200 officers, 100 SWAT, again, after 24 hours they found the man wasn’t home.
The exterior panes tend to cover 2 floors giving the rooms a more spacious appearance. And that would make the actual distance twice as far apart is it might appear. So yes, that would be a really huge suite.
Pinging VT for thoughts.
Yeah, that’s a popular glass pattern on vegas resort towers, used on the Mandalay, Wynn, and Encore towers. I think even Trump International tower uses that pattern, too.
Checkout the floor plan for mandalay's two-bedroom suites, which is the type that pollard rented:
Listen to the LVPD dispatch feed from last night. It was on live leak, and probably on youtube. It took 17 minutes from when the first call came into dispatch, until they were at the door of the gunman. The cops says we are on floor 32, room 135. Security guard is shot in the leg and in the hall by elevator.
So it must have taken another hour before they got swat there and entered the room. Not sure why that took so long, but the audio is unedited and it’s 17 minutes from first report to the cops are at his door.
The eyewitness account of the austin guy in the neighboring room said the shooting lasted around 15 minutes, which is close to the 17-minute timeline in your quote.
Do something useful instead of just spouting crap:
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