Posted on 03/23/2009 10:24:17 AM PDT by Drew68
When Oakland police Sgts. Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai burst into an apartment on 74th Avenue on Saturday, they knew they were entering a dangerous situation. After all, they were looking for a man who had already killed two police officers.
What they didn't know was that the killer, Lovelle Mixon, had somehow gotten hold of an AK-47 assault rifle, police officials say. All they knew was that the gunman who had shot motorcycle officers Sgt. Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege about two hours earlier used a handgun.
"Nobody knew he had an AK-47," said City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who was among four council members to join Mayor Ron Dellums and acting Police Chief Howard Jordan for a late-night press conference Saturday.
The bulletproof vests that Romans and Sakai wore were no help - when Mixon fired his automatic rifle through a closet door in the apartment, he hit the two sergeants in the head.
The killings of four officers would devastate any police department. But it was especially traumatic for an Oakland force that has been beefed up in recent years with a lot of young, inexperienced cops.
"We've got a really young force out there, and this is really hitting them hard," officer Bob Valladon, former head of the Oakland Police Officers Association, said Sunday as he drove from one slain officer's home to another to meet with their families. "We've hired maybe 25o new cops in the past five years, so about a quarter of the force has never seen anything like this. No one has.
"These cops (who were killed) were veterans," Valladon said. "The best of the best."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
It was in a newspaper, so I'd venture to say "No way.".
Just another aside. In my former life as a jarhead, we had MOUT training (Military operations in urban terrain) which is the closest to this situation I know about. I remember from training if you were confronted with known bad guys behind a door, you throw in a bunch of grenades and charge in after the explosion. The theory being that if you don’t kill them, the concussive force of the grenade will disorient them for those precious few seconds afterwards where you have the advantage.
I’m not saying that the SWAT team should be throwing grenades in, but even the military does no train you to go charging through the door where known armed bad guys are.
Unfortunately, I suspect they weren’t thinking straight when the went in. They wanted to get the SOB who shot their colleagues.
This is a time when an FBI team or any outside team that wasn’t emotionally involved with the situation should have been used.
Nothing you said is incorrect.
However, I’m interested in the background. Is this just a simple case of “felon in illegal possession of weapon”, or is it “felon in illegal possession of NFA Class III weapon”.
If it’s the latter, starts to fall into the “Black Swan” category”. How did he pay for it if it was going for anywhere near the full market value? If he didn’t pay full market value, what else did he do to acquire it? How many more of them are there out there?
The guys runs into an apartment and they happen to have a AK-47 in their closet? Something isn't being told yet.
An AK-47 has a very distinctive sound/report when fired. It’s noticeablly more of a POW than the pop of an AR-15 or 9 mm. *IF* they had heard the weapon fire, they would’ve known better what they were up against.
I wonder if the perp had fired the weapon previously within earshot of the officers.
Perhaps not since he was hiding in the closet.
It’ll be interesting to find out (IF we ever do) if the perp had a genuine fully automatice AK-47 or just a semi-automtic rifle with a curved magazine.
When I lived in Oakland about 20 years ago near MacArthur and Fruitvale, it was not uncommon to hear automatic weapons “celebratory” fire on some evenings. Not every night to be sure, but often enough. So it would reasonable to assume that your typical Oakland gang-banger would have access to to a weapon like that.
You’re probably right, but it would be nice to know for sure.
Whoa - wait a second - this doesn't pass the smell test.
Weren't they wearing helmets?
He put a 125 to 150 grain round THROUGH A DOOR, and he managed to miss the officer's helmet, but he still hit him in the head and delivered a fatal wound?!?
And he did it not once, but TWICE - to two different officers?!?!?
That's like a million-to-one even followed by a second million-to-one event, for something like a trillion-to-one sequence of events.
This stinks to high heaven.
Oh. My bad. I retrieve my comment that SWAT should have apprehended at the apartment. Looks as though they did. I just thought they went in like in the movies fully ready for guns such as this. But I guess I need to get out more. LOL. Very sad. Very sad indeed. What a POS the criminal is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SFGate has an AK47, as does KTVU, but KTVU also claims the handgun was an “automatic”, when, in fact, it wasn’t.
So, I think I’ll wait a bit for the official word. Most of the stories appear to be quoting an attorney who says he’s representing the officer’s families.
I’m guessing the helmets are more resistant to “blunt force trauma” than they are to bullets.
I suspect that after having two of their own just blown away, they made some costly errors in regards to their entry.
The article says “automatic rifle” -
but I doubt the author knows the difference.
Besides, if it was, it was illegal for him to have it.
Besides, if he was a convict on parole, it was illegal to have ANY firearm.
So, no new laws would make a difference.
Not paroling the criminal bas**** would have stopped it.
Anything for an excuse to ban guns from law abding citizens.
I believe, and you can call me tin foil wearer if you want, but I believe that many of these incidents are orchestrated by the left in order to push their anti-gun agenda.
The better question to ask is why this violent felon was out on the streets to begin with. Why wasn’t he in prison? Of course the stupid liberals of the SF Chronicle would never dream of writing about that. This liberal newspaper needs to go bankrupt.
Well then they skimped on their helmet budget.
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