Posted on 10/07/2005 9:53:06 AM PDT by linkinpunk
Today: October 07, 2005 at 9:50:28 PDT
Police Kill Armed Man, Hostage in Fla.
By MITCH STACY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Police officers shot and killed a man and the woman he was holding hostage after the suspect fired a shotgun at them, police said.
Officers responding to a witness report saw the armed man and the hostage inside a motel room, police spokesman Laura McElroy said. They heard a gunshot, and minutes later the man came out of the room with the woman.
"He has the woman in a headlock with the gun pointed at her head," McElroy said. "He spots an officer to his right, levels the shotgun at the officer and fires at the officer."
More than one officer shot at the man, killing him and wounding the woman, McElroy said. She died at a hospital hours later.
McElroy said the officers were forced to return fire to defend themselves, regardless of the hostage situation. She said the officers were "just sick" that an innocent person was killed.
"It's the last thing they wanted to do," she said.
The suspect, Gary T. Brewer, 45, had held another woman, his girlfriend, hostage at her condominium for hours beginning late Thursday, McElroy said. She broke away and called police, but Brewer fled before officers arrived.
Investigators were still trying to determine how Brewer knew the first woman.
The gunshot that came from inside the motel room hit a dog, which was wounded.
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Sad....
Sounds like a goof up, if you ask me.
Sounds like a no-win situation to me.
Agreed - where are the flipping snipers with the head shot?!?!
It's easy to second-guess this situation, but my suggestion would be to have an officer with a rifle and some training that may have been able to take the perp out without harming the hostage.
Of course, we don't know all the details.
Too many guys shooting at him. They should have had one guy do it, and chosen someone who had better aim.
What was the distance from the perp to officers?
The perp was able to level, aim , and fire a shotgun, yet miss the officers? And the officers returned fire, hitting perp AND hostage? Sounds lik the cops were too far away for a clean shot.
If it was a hostage situation, where was the marksman with a .308???
Something seems wrong.
I'm told that in real life it's not always quite so easy.
So, how did the dog get wounded before it was shot?.........
Sounds like the move with Sanda Bullock & Kenneau Reeves: "SHOOT THE HOSTAGE" taking them out of the equasion.
It sounds like the situation unfolded rapidly...I doubt their SWAT guys had even been activated.
And most tense situations can be resolved in 30 minutes minus commercials.
It is amazing to see how people (freepers too) expect real life to be handled as cleverly as on TV or the movies and then deny that tv and the movies are influencial in their lives!
If time permitted, yes. However, when the first bullet flies, the reaction of cops as well as bad guys is to start shooting, too. It takes a LOT of training to slow down, think, and focus on putting your sights on the BG instead of focusing on the BG and just pulling the trigger. Unfortunately, most cops don't have that much realistic training.
That's what I figured.
It's not always possible to use snipers. If the bad guy was in a hallway inside the building, a sniper isn't practical. In addition, a lot of smaller towns and cities don't have SWAT capabiities and they may not have had time to request SWAT support from a larger agency.
I agree that the use of trained "snipers" should be greatly expanded and speeded up. Right now, few police departments have really first rate marksmen/women readily available, but have hordes of psychobabbling "negotiators". If half the money spent on psychobabble training was redirected to sniper rifle marksmanship training, taking a clean headshot would be a much easier option.
IMO the problem is due to the infiltration of bleeding-heart leftism into law enforcement and courts. I'm sure that policies and laws on the books require police to try a zillion "non-violent" measures to end a hostage situation, before giving the go-ahead to a sniper. Often it doesn't work, and even when it does, the taxpayers end up with the tab for keeping some animal caged/paroled/re-arrested, etc.
I'll never forget the case a few years ago, where a non-custodial father took his baby son hostage. A long stand-off ensued, while "negotiators" and the baby's mother tried to reason with him. In the end he just smashed the baby's head into the concrete in front of everyone, killing the baby. We need law enforcement to operate on policy of "we don't negotiate with terrorists".
Very true. There have been extensive studies into this type of situation that show that the police tend to look at the weapon, not the bad guy. As a result, they tend to shoot where they look.
I was in one situation where I was being shot at and it's very hard to describe what it's like. You get tunnel vision and loose your fine motor skills. I've seen guys eject all the shells from a shotgun without firing a round. I've also seen guys empty a magazine without realizing that they ever fired a shot. The only way to avoid this is to practice.
The best SWAT and Special Forces operatives will spend more time on the range in a month than most of us spend in a lifetime. They also go through thousands of dollars of ammo in a typical month.
Especially Florida cops.
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