[warbow150]

Bad part about a hostage situation is that anyone he shot previously is bleeding out.

I know it’s early days and there’s a lot of bad info moving around at present, but I‘ve not yet seen anything about him taking hostages. I’ve read he had barricaded himself in a classroom, but obviously a barricaded gunman is a different equation than a hostage scenario.

Anyway, I’d like to see something a little more reliable than the evening news. Perhaps a preliminary AAR will tell us a bit more.

 

[1cm]

SRO was at Parkland too, it may have hurt rather than helped. If Coral Springs hadn’t arrived and handled their business…

SRO will not be where the shooter starts most of the time.

Randy

SRO confronted him at Point Of Entry and was shot.

 

[warbow150]

Sheriffs/police chiefs - and by extensions their communities - have to be willing to spend more on training. Officers absolutely cannot be proficient at dynamic entry, gunfighting, and hostage/victim rescue without proper (valid, current tactics taught be SMEs), frequent training and practice. If they want their patrol officers to aggress and stop an active shooter such as in a school, they absolutely have to do more. Good training costs time and money.

With low staffing, training time is more precious than ever. Regulatory agencies like POST need to eliminate mandatory training that isn’t there to win fights and solve crimes. Pretty much if it doesn’t require a safety briefing and a first aid kit on site, then it isn’t worth cutting a chunk of time out for.

Pony up.

I think the amount of money and time spent on training for these is a big variable across the country. Some places I know really got after it, especially in the wake of Sandy Hook. Single officer response is now basically considered the default setting for most of the departments mine worked with, and many of them trained their officers in it as much as they could while still keeping the lights on in the squad room.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt in my mind that many organizations haven’t gotten with that particular program yet and would be much slower. Hopefully they‘ll catch up.

Obviously staffing the right kind of officers helps, too. If they don’t bite when they‘re puppies they usually won’t bite much at all when it’s needed. I worry many departments are getting so desperate and liability gun shy that the raw material for five years from now isn’t, broadly speaking, as up for it as it was 20 years ago.

 

[Dukeboy01]

@warbow150 (Since the @#$% reply/ quote widget won't work as is now usual!)

If a gunman is barricaded in a room with multiple persons who are not his willing co- conspirators, those people are, by default, his hostages.

My interpretation is that's what happened here. The suspect's intent was to be an "active shooter" and go throughout the school, killing as many people as he could. However, due to the intervention of the SRO, his plan, such as it was, failed and he ended up as a barricaded hostage taker with significantly less ammo than he originally brought.

The scenario started off as an "active shooter," but within minutes, possibly within seconds, and before any additional law enforcement arrived to assist the lone SRO, it became a "barricade/ hostage situation."

I've been retired for almost three years now and it's been at least 5 years since the last time I did active shooter, but the response shifts gears from "seek and destroy" to " negotiate/ bring in the entry team" once the shooter is confined to a specific, enclosed area and no longer actively shooting people. At least that's how we did it.

 

[1cm]

There is no evidence of hostages like Orlando.

All evidence is he started shooting when he got in room, and continued shooting till he ran out of ammo or live kids. Shooting of kids was likely over in 60 seconds or less.

 

[warbow150]

@warbow150 (Since the @#$% reply/ quote widget won't work as is now usual!)

If a gunman is barricaded in a room with multiple persons who are not his willing co- conspirators, those people are, by default, his hostages.

Sure, I agree. I just haven’t read anything which indicates that’s what happened. Just because he’s in a class room doesn’t mean it’s occupied.

 

[GPalmer]

I'm biding my time on this one. There's a great deal of conflicting narratives out there. I look forward to their convergence on something approximating reality.

 

[Dukeboy01]

"Ramos barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade classroom — “and that’s where the carnage began,” McCraw continued.
The cold-blooded killer sprayed a hail of bullets into the room, cutting down 19 kids and two teachers and sending some students jumping out windows in a bid to save their lives."

I'm basing most of my theory that Ramos was barricaded in the classroom and that's where most of the killing occurred on this statement from the TX DPS spokesman, FWIW.

But, as others have said, there are still a lot of competing narratives out there. I imagine there will probably be a thorough after- action review like they did in Broward County after this one.

 

[OLY-M4gery]

We are training officers not to use force if at all possible. De-escalation, no pursuit policies, etc while scrutinizing officers that use any level of force. Not to mention not arming patrol officers with long guns.

I know someone will say NYPD doesn't have long guns, except ESU. Well, if you work for a department that had 24/7/365 "SWAT" coverage you can do that. Since the other 99% don't have "SWAT" coverage 24/7/365 they need a different plan.

But then we all act surprised when an active shooter incident happens and the on duty patrol officers don't act like ninja-seal-green berets.

I'm not sure exactly what happened in this incident. But my guess is a combination of "it can't happen here", and we don't want to be too gung-ho, created a level of complacency.

 

[OLY-M4gery]

"Ramos barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade classroom — “and that’s where the carnage began,” McCraw continued.
The cold-blooded killer sprayed a hail of bullets into the room, cutting down 19 kids and two teachers and sending some students jumping out windows in a bid to save their lives."

I'm basing most of my theory that Ramos was barricaded in the classroom and that's where most of the killing occurred on this statement from the TX DPS spokesman, FWIW.

But, as others have said, there are still a lot of competing narratives out there. I imagine there will probably be a thorough after- action review like they did in Broward County after this one.

If you are an active shooter, and you lock yourself into a room with victims, you are a barricaded ACTIVE SHOOTER, not a barricaded suspect.

 

[walkinguf61]

The SRO in this case did their job. They confronted the shooter and shot it out with him. It’s why the shooter was confined to one classroom. If anything to critique in his actions was being timid to go to deadly force earlier. But in todays railroading of cops environment, we can’t really blame him. He is discribed as engaging him before the gunman entered the building, causing the gunman to drop his extra ammo. He appears to have gone to physical force over deadly physical force until the gunman actually entered the building . That’s when the gun fight started. The gunman is said to have attempted to two other classes but were locked out. He found a third door unlocked which was that classroom where he shot the kids. If that door was locked, he might have been stopped.
The SRO was shot and stayed in the fight.

The critique of the police response is that they waited to enter the room earlier. The SRO did his or her job.

 

[spectralhunter]

@warbow150 (Since the @#$% reply/ quote widget won't work as is now usual!)

If a gunman is barricaded in a room with multiple persons who are not his willing co- conspirators, those people are, by default, his hostages.

My interpretation is that's what happened here. The suspect's intent was to be an "active shooter" and go throughout the school, killing as many people as he could. However, due to the intervention of the SRO, his plan, such as it was, failed and he ended up as a barricaded hostage taker with significantly less ammo than he originally brought.

The scenario started off as an "active shooter," but within minutes, possibly within seconds, and before any additional law enforcement arrived to assist the lone SRO, it became a "barricade/ hostage situation."

I've been retired for almost three years now and it's been at least 5 years since the last time I did active shooter, but the response shifts gears from "seek and destroy" to " negotiate/ bring in the entry team" once the shooter is confined to a specific, enclosed area and no longer actively shooting people. At least that's how we did it.

That’s a fair course of action.

I have a question though. If in a barricade/hostage situation, you start hearing gunfire within, what’s the course of action then?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[merlynusn]

If you are an active shooter, and you lock yourself into a room with victims, you are a barricaded ACTIVE SHOOTER, not a barricaded suspect.

That is my take on it now. That even though he isnt actively shooting, he has shot a bunch of people who need immediate medical attention. Just wondering if they had made entry within 5 minutes instead of 40-60 minutes if some of those kids would be alive.

 

[OLY-M4gery]

Why is it, that the same politicians that don't want suspects convicted of crimes sent to prison/jail, or requiring cash bail, are the same ones that want to make more laws after incidents like this?

Maybe if we vigorously investigated, and prosecuted crimes committed by armed suspects, and made sure every "gun crime" that resulted in a conviction ended with a jail/prison sentence. Maybe then we would change behavior.

I know locally, no "prohibited persons" that try to buy a gun from an FFL, and get rejected during the background check get prosecuted. No one goes to jail for illegally carrying/possessing a firearm. Violent criminals that get charged with "felon in possession of a firearm" get sent to federal court, because the state courts don't treat that crime seriously.

 

[walkinguf61]

If you are an active shooter, and you lock yourself into a room with victims, you are a barricaded ACTIVE SHOOTER, not a barricaded suspect.

ESU aren’t the only ones. The old boro task force, now SRG, have long guns as well. Quick response? Luck of the draw. New York City traffic can play a big roll in that.
It will be a handgun vs whatever the bad guy has in the beginning.

 

[fastbolt]

Sheriffs/police chiefs - and by extensions their communities - have to be willing to spend more on training. Officers absolutely cannot be proficient at dynamic entry, gunfighting, and hostage/victim rescue without proper (valid, current tactics taught be SMEs), frequent training and practice. If they want their patrol officers to aggress and stop an active shooter such as in a school, they absolutely have to do more. Good training costs time and money.

With low staffing, training time is more precious than ever. Regulatory agencies like POST need to eliminate mandatory training that isn’t there to win fights and solve crimes. Pretty much if it doesn’t require a safety briefing and a first aid kit on site, then it isn’t worth cutting a chunk of time out for.

Pony up.

That would require a couple of things ...

First, that AO training no longer include burning up limited training hours addressing whatever hot button issues come along that some legislators think needs to be taught to cops.

Second, that you have the best people available to not only excel at the advanced training, but have the initiative, will power and mindset to put themselves in Harm's Way to protect the innocent victims at soft target sites, and not just huddle up and wait for help, themselves.

Both are probably going to prove to be difficult to achieve in today's societal and political climate. More's the pity.

Then again, I'm only on my second cup of coffee and am still in pessimist-mode.

 

[Dukeboy01]

@OLY-M4gery

Not if you're no longer actively shooting. Then you're a hostage taker. At least that's how we looked at it. Continued dynamic response by the lesser trained first- responding patrol teams was judged more likely to result in additional civilian casualties than slowing down, containing the subject, and going the negotiator/ SWAT route to end the scenario.

As for what to do when the active shooter who became a non- shooting hostage taker starts shooting hostages, well, everything just really starts to suck, don't it?

I think you have to consider the hostages in the room with barricaded subject as "already dead" as long as there are other innocent subjects still in danger, in adjacent rooms, for example. Interior drywall ain't stopping bullets. So, until the 3rd graders and the 5th graders in the rooms on either side of the 4th graders are secured, you don't move on the 4th grade classroom. And when you do, you're moving on your timetable with the best team and the best equipment. Sucks, but that's my take on it.

At the end of the day all of these things are an exercise in picking your poison, choosing the lesser of many evils, and trying to engineer the least horrible of many potentially horrible outcomes.

 

[merlynusn]

Not if you're no longer actively shooting. Then you're a hostage taker. At least that's how we looked at it. Continued dynamic response by the lesser trained first- responding patrol teams was judged more likely to result in additional civilian casualties than slowing down, containing the subject, and going the negotiator/ SWAT route to end the scenario.

At the end of the day all of these things are an exercise in picking your poison, choosing the lesser of many evils, and trying to engineer the least horrible of many potentially horrible outcomes.

And I guess that is my question: Should that change now?

 

[fastbolt]

Why is it, that the same politicians that don't want suspects convicted of crimes sent to prison/jail, or requiring cash bail, are the same ones that want to make more laws after incidents like this?

Maybe if we vigorously investigated, and prosecuted crimes committed by armed suspects, and made sure every "gun crime" that resulted in a conviction ended with a jail/prison sentence. Maybe then we would change behavior.

I know locally, no "prohibited persons" that try to buy a gun from an FFL, and get rejected during the background check get prosecuted. No one goes to jail for illegally carrying/possessing a firearm. Violent criminals that get charged with "felon in possession of a firearm" get sent to federal court, because the state courts don't treat that crime seriously.

You're going to run headlong into the 'restorative justice' folks, as well as the political activists (including some prosecutors) who don't want to see the wrong demographic of violent criminals spend years behind bars. It's not 'fair', and it's really society's fault, right?

Same old song and dance, made new again ...

It's better - from a political perspective, it appears - to pass such laws than to face the consequences of seeing them actually enforced. 😨

 

[walkinguf61]

Not if you're no longer actively shooting. Then you're a hostage taker. At least that's how we looked at it. Continued dynamic response by the lesser trained first- responding patrol teams was judged more likely to result in additional civilian casualties than slowing down, containing the subject, and going the negotiator/ SWAT route to end the scenario.

At the end of the day all of these things are an exercise in picking your poison, choosing the lesser of many evils, and trying to engineer the least horrible of many potentially horrible outcomes.

Exactly. It becomes a barricaded hostage situation. We don’t know when he started or stopped shooting hostages beyond his initial entry. The shooting might have stopped before the other officers arrived to relieve the SRO who had been shot .
Thry didn’t make an earlier entry because they didn’t have a key to the now locked classroom door— officers were shot in the attempted entry