Posted on 06/22/2016 4:02:14 PM PDT by Uncle Sam 911
A Florida police officer said Tuesday that he and a group of five of six other officers surrounded the bathroom where Omar Mateen was holed up, but were told to wait until a SWAT team arrived.
Belle Isle, Fla. Police Officer Brandon Cornwell, 25, told The Washington Post that he and the officers entered Pulse Orlando as bullets flew and clubgoers screamed. He said his group aimed their rifles and waited about “15 or 20 minutes” because they were told not to engage the bathroom area. Cornwell said he never even saw Mateen.
Federal authorities said Monday that police “engaged the shooter” inside the club at about 2:08 a.m. Cornwall’s account to The Post offers a first glimpse into the efforts to take down Mateen, who murdered 49 people before being killed by officers in a hail of gunfire.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It takes 3 HOURS for a SWAT team to arrive????
Flash bang and then clear the room.
SWAT should be trained and ready at all times
No, but at 2 am on a Saturday night, it takes 20 minutes for a SWAT team to arrive.
IIRC, he killed thirty people in that bathroom, giggling and laughing while he shot them under and over the stall they were hiding in. Only one person lived to tell the story.
So why, exactly, were the cops there at all? After all, they went to where there was a shooter. Was it to arrest anyone who had an unregistered pistol they might have used to try to save themselves?
My God, words fail. May these cops be haunted, for the rest of their lives, by the sounds of the screams and shots they heard while they stayed safe on the other side of that door.
> People died because of their incompetence.
None of the people who died were cops - just expendable mundanes. The primary goal of officer safety was successfully achieved.
Remember, those officers have families to go home to at night - it simply wouldn’t do to put them at risk.
Yes, I agree. Our police aren't militarized enough already, so let's have enough full time SWAT officers to have a team on duty and suited up 24/7/365.
Call it a 20 man SWAT team, times three shifts per day, times seven days per week, plus enough additional officers to cover for vacations, sick leave, and the never ending training exercises.
I figure about 150 full time officers should do it.
So sad.
I haven’t heard much about the funerals/memorial services for the victims.
This latest news has to make it that much harder.
I have another question that has been nagging at me for the last week and a half.
There were two or three of the dead that were UNDERAGE. Including a young guy from Phoenix, whom was only nineteen years of age. Does Florida have a lower age of majority than the others?
Or as I suspect, has that little inconvenient fact just been kinda slid back into the shadows?
My liberal ex would call the cops at the drop of a hat. She took offense when I said they didn’t care.
Just how far away was the Delta Force, anyway? Omar claiming to have a bomb and also a remotely-triggered car bomb outside didn't help matters.
Odungo’s rules of engagement....best not to offend
the sensibilities of your mooslim neighbor, its better to die an unnecessary death.
There was that shooting in Oregon at the community college. Two cops in their car showed up and as they were driving they were planning on who would grab what out of the trunk as they suited up with their vests and stuff. I don’t recall if their plan was to wait for others or not.
As they drove up they heard the shooting and all of their planning went out the window. They had their pistols and maybe one grabbed a rifle or shotgun from inside the car and ran towards the sounds of gunfire.
They came around the corner of a building and the shooter took a couple of shots at them but they kept going and got him within a few minutes of getting the call.
How many wounded, who would otherwise have survived, bled out during those three hours? It would be interesting to see the autopsy reports, but I suspect they will never see the light of day.
In the old days of Journalism, some reporter would be bird-dogging the Coroner and write up a Page One story.
Who gave the stand down order? Reminiscent of Benghazi, hmmm..
Or...
You could do what most major cities do.
SWAT officers always have thier equipment while on duty in other positions. An immediate recall and the are ready to roll in 15 minutes.
Or we can wait 3 hours while a muslim systematically executes 50 people...
Once they were trapped in the bathroom, he probably used them for awhile as hostages. Killing them every now and than, while warning police he had a bomb. So they eventually punched a hole in the outer wall and one survivor came running out ? Then Omar ? Thought I read that quite a few people came out those holes ?
I am not completely convinced of Orlando PD’s culpability yet, but I must admit that the evidence increasingly indicates an utterly inadequate initial response.
I was a police firearms instructor, Special Reaction Team trained. I always instructed my officers that in the event of an active shooter, it was their duty to do whatever they could to neutralize him by forcing him to cover, or killing him, even at the dire risk of their own lives. I taught them that even only one officer on the scene was an active shooter neutralizer, and two or more was an active shooter neutralizer fire team, and should employ tactics toward that end. I taught them if they were not prepared to do so, they they were morally obligated to resign.
Waiting for SWAT is fine in a stabilized situation. An active shooter calls for desperate measures to stop. This must be hammered into law enforcement at all levels. I would have disregarded such halt orders and assaulted that bathroom with whomever would have accompanied me, or alone if I had to, and dealt with the consequences later. My conscience would not have allowed me any other action.
They showed restraint against a terrorist, but if that had been a drug raid, it’s grenades and tanks away! But then again they have declared a war on drugs, and islam is a religion of peace.
“they were told”...gotta love the passive voice. Who told them to wait?
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