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Outgunned in a 2,000-Round Gun Battle
The North Hollywood Shootout was a 2,000-round gun battle between two bank robbers and the LAPD on February 28, 1997. A gun battle when shotguns and pistols were not enough when engaging two heavily armed and armored suspects.
Police departments started to add long guns like AR-15’s to their patrol vehicles after the North Hollywood shootout. There has been criticism of the militarization of the police. If the expectation is that police officers should risk their lives to engage active shooters, then, as the tip of the spear, at the very least they should be given the proper tools to get the job done.
The Buffalo, NY, shooter was wearing body armor. Biden has signed an Executive to stop providing military-grade equipment to police departments. Military-grade body armor with ceramic plates would be extra protection for officers hunting a shooter. It could be kept in the trunk until needed. Armored vehicles can be used to evacuate both citizens and officers, as well moving officers closer to a shooter. An armored vehicle can be used to knock down an exterior wall.
Unlike the barking media, I only have two questions that I would like answered. Dispatchers received cell phone calls from the children trapped in a Texas classroom. Did dispatchers inform officers inside the school of the cell calls from students? The second question: were dispatchers asking a student(s) where the shooter was in the classroom? A simple question such as: is the bad guy at the front of the classroom? The second question could have helped with the decision of how and when to breach the door.
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Published in Policing
Indeed. The real problem is the Federalization of anything not directly under the Federal government.
Media reports have not been reliable. but seem to have improved as time has passed.
My principle question is whether, as reported (WSJ, for one) Ramos was outside the school firing shots for several minutes before entering. Although law enforcement has come under some criticism, this aspect has not received much coverage.
But it seems to raise the question of whether this tragedy could have been stopped before it started
Yes, and the exterior door left open by a teacher that went to get a cell phone, hopefully to make a call to 9-1-1 didn’t help. I lived in the world of possibility rather than probability. Whether it was a traffic stop, or any call I answered. Murphy of Murphy’s law was an optimist. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
The question I have is were the the outside gunshots heard, if so why didn’t the classroom doors get locked. It is reported that he was outside firing about 12 min. If the police could not get into the classroom then the shooter shouldn’t have.
I’ve read that there was a fire station across the street. There’s some fog of war here, but, if true, how do we explain that lack of communication? Note I’m not suggesting that firemen should have responded, but why no contact with police?
There are many unanswered questions. The rush to answer questions doesn’t help. The Texas Rangers are now in charge of the investigation. My advice would be to wait until the Texas Rangers provide a pdf of their findings. The full report should be made public. It will be hundreds of pages of long. I believe that transparency is essential no matter how painful that may be. An investigation should not only be used to assign blame. It should be used to evaluate training and making appropriate changes to improve responses in law enforcement agencies across the US.
The reasonable criticism seems to be that locking the doors is one of the primary ways to prevent armed incursions. This is as I read it, the third most necessary thing to be done to prevent a mass shooting.
Identifying, confronting and neutralizing the shooter outside the building is the second most important part of prevention. And encouraging and following up tips of somebody talking or writing about conducting a shooting is the first most important part of prevention.
The first two have many moving parts. But the third, locking the doors, is the simplest and easiest.
This is the sort of story where the 72 Hour Rule has to be replaced by the 7 Day Rule. The amount of confusion is proportional to the number of people involved, the number of organizations and bureaucracies involved, and the emotional weight of the story.
I had not heard that. I get propping a door if you are carrying a stack of books, but not a cellphone. How long does it take get a cellphone? My gut is telling me that door was propped open a lot of the time.
Didn’t see your reply in #3. Yeah I have seen Murphy’s law in action many times while working in aerospace. You hear of schools going into “lockdown” over sometimes silly reasons, here is a time a little precaution would have saved lives. Going for a cellphone? the classroom was probably full of them. It’s always several things that add up to a big disaster.
You also have to remember that it was the last week of school. There probably wasn’t a whole lot of structured learning going on. Likely lots of celebratory stuff and I’m sure staff was getting lax with that end of the year feeling. I suspect that this was a case of cascading errors. I know when my wife was flying fast movers almost every fatal accident investigation found a chain of errors resulting in the crash. This will end up being no different except military aviation accident investigations don’t carry punitive measures so that people cooperate fully. In this case everyone is going to want to hang someone out to dry.
IF Ramos fired his MSR outside of the school (I would like this to be confirmed from multiple sources) it would absolutely, positively, unquestionably be gunshot reports unique to this neighborhood:
My experience? I manage an outdoor firearm range in a western Virginia county, on property that abuts ‘town limits’. I can assure you it garners more sound awareness than I care to deal with. Proper notification to all local law enforcement was my first priority.
The closest residential property to me is 1500m, as the crow flies. Typical city blocks: 250 – 400m. Even a long city block in Chicago is 600m. So yes. These rifle reports would be noticed (unless it is southside Chicago…sorry, I had to throw that jab at Mayor Lightfoot’s fiefdom)
I get that it’s Texas, so firearms are commonplace. But locals not giving proper attention to MSR (modern sporting rifle) rounds fired in this area? To borrow a Texas idiom: That dog won’t hunt.
I confess that I’m split on this. Nowadays, investigations are the coverups, and the truth that escaped early is gaslit away. “Lies”.
Yes, but on which side of the seven days should we stand?
Benghazi. January 6th. And so on.
Okay, I am not seeing evidence of a fire department near Robb Elementary. There is the Hillcrest Funeral Home across Geraldine on the corner of Perez, and several entrances & a parking lot are facing the funeral home.
There’s also the matter of the structure of Robb Elementary. It is odd – seems to have a lot of long hallways and separated buildings. It is a completely different design than the high school. I wonder if the design played a role?
It could well have been stopped, but not in the way you mean. While it is true that only a minority of mentally ill people commit violent crimes, half or even more of all rampage killings are committed by people who are seriously mentally ill.
Furthermore, it is rare for a person to go from zero to rampage killer without coming into contact with police and the mental health establishment. States in which civil commitment of the violent mentally ill is easier have around 1/3 fewer rampage killings than do states which make such commitments harder.
I would agree but suggest it also could have been stopped by a response to the circumstance to which I’m referring.
When I was the Emergency Manager for the Navy Region in Japan over 10 years ago, I managed some emergency dispatch (i.e. 911) centers. Although I wasn’t new to disaster preparation, emergency dispatch was a new thing. Based on situations that occurred, one of the questions that I thought of during that tour was how we could use emerging technologies, such as smart phones and social media, to support our community of American military personnel, civil servants and their families during emergency situations.
One problem I spent time researching involved trying to find a way to send one’s location information without having to know your address. Since the base community was almost all Americans who had no Japanese language ability, they would be unable to read most address signs when out in town. The addressing system here is different from in America, and since people can get flustered during emergency situations, I wanted something that didn’t make them dependent upon there being a Japanese person who knew English well enough to help. I looked for any sort of app that could provide their own location but there were few options, and generally involved having to manipulate a complicated app when they might be in a mental fog after a car accident. An app that can be used to contact the nearest dispatch center or other designated number and send one’s current location could be a life-saver.
Let’s take my proposed app a step further. While those kids were still in that classroom, it sure would have helped if their smart phones had an app with the capability not only to call the dispatch center and automatically provide their location, but it could also send audio or video from their smart phone to the dispatch center, which could be routed to the police on the scene. Even if they couldn’t hold the phone high enough to show the shooter, they could show the inside of the room and indicate the direction of the shooter. The app could also include a chat function, so that they wouldn’t actually have to risk using their voice and possibly give away their location to the shooter. I don’t know if such an app exists, but based on the capabilities built into smart phones, it shouldn’t be hard to develop, and then provide dispatch centers the ability to use the information from it.
The lack of communication between the 911 center and those who were on site is what I keep fussing over.
Many years ago, I went for a training run in our local mountains with a friend. A VERY long story short, Search and Rescue and local police were involved, and set up a “command post” near where we’d left the car (I live in a small town). There’s a police shooting range in our local mountains with a phone that goes directly to the police dept. When I explained who I was, and that I needed the dispatcher to call JY, she immediately put me through to the cops at the command post. And a very complicated situation got straightened out very quickly (apparently when your wife is missing, you’re the suspect)
So my question: were the cops on site informed of the 911 calls from inside the classroom? If not, inexcusable. If so, inexcusable.
I can’t understand why the cop in control didn’t turn over control to the tactical team when they showed up the shields. I think it was 30 minutes wasted time when they could have made better decisions.
You’re right in that the targets should be harder.
But it’s a mistake to think that it just happened that we have crazies on the street. The state mental hospitals didn’t fall. They were pushed. There are now billions of dollars to be grifted by “stakeholders” in keeping the crazies on our streets and in our parks.
I don’t see what the militarization of police and the edict to ban body armor has anything much to do with this closing paragraph.
I have a LOT more than two questions about this incident. It seems you are throwing up some chaff in the direction of the dispatchers here, while other much more pressing lapses occurred.
At some point police departments across the country need to focus on their actual role in the ‘community’. Are they really there to “protect and serve” or are they just functionaries who manage criminals after-the-fact and enforcers of the easy laws like lockdown enforcement and stopping drivers for broken taillights, fishing for more criminality.
The level of sheep-like stupidity, authoritarian us versus them mentality, laziness, and frankly cowardice, all the while glorifying themselves as having such a dangerous job is pathetic.
Have all the armored vehicles, long-guns and kevlar you want. It doesn’t matter if you have the kind of culture that many police forces have across the country. This is not the first case the police have been revealed to be negligent and exposed as process-laden functionaries.
It has become quite clear that the police in general have a real PR crisis on their hands juxtaposing their amazing abilities to shut down playgrounds and rid beaches of maskless surfers, SWAT 72 year-old men in their sleep for alleged white-collar crimes, and stand down while riots raged (allowing themselves to be politicized and co-opted by Democrats) … and then this.
This incident is a perfect example of the general attitude and process the police go through. They have all the time in the world as long as they themselves aren’t under threat.
I’ve seen the films from the LA shootout, Doug. It’s still used for trainings. It’s sickening to watch.
I wrote this to my liberal minister e-mail group today:
Anyone who has ever expressed horror at the inaction of gentile Germans during the Holocaust should ask him or herself not merely “would I have defended my Jewish neighbors” but how would I have defended them? With what instrument, what means?
Anyone who imagines that violence—real violence—can be stopped with “dialogue” or “de-escalation” simply lacks experience in real violence. In movies, the violence makes room for dialogue—how else would the plot advance? In real life, violence, once commenced, is fast, mindless and absolutely merciless.
This news story contains a viral video that was posted to TikTok (whatever that is) by its maker—a young man whose apparently-trained response to a woman-in-danger was to whip out his phone and start filming for posterity.
As it happens, the woman survived more or less unhurt, though my guess is that she was pretty thoroughly traumatized, not just by the attack but because she had been immediately abandoned by her fellow passengers, some of whom literally turned away from her and pretended to read their e-mail on those f___ing omnipresent phones.
Shades of Kitty Genovese…or of the testimony of Holocaust survivors who, years later, remembered not merely the brutality of the brutish perpetrators but the studied indifference of “nice, normal” bystanders.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/woman-harassed-nyc-subway-bystanders
What would you have done? On the subway that day, I mean? Who would you have been, in today’s TikTok parable?
If you are anything like me, you’ve reacted to the history of the Holocaust with some version of “how could they have allowed it to happen?” If you imagine yourself doing otherwise—as a brave defender of your Jewish neighbor—it is worth asking not just whether you would intervene, but how? With what instrument?
The West Virginia woman with the gun in her purse, who stopped what was clearly shaping up to be the next Uvalde, had “accepted a level of violence” whether she was comfortable with it or not. (And: thank God she did). Violence is what it is, and exists. No comfort, no consent required.
As I’ve said, I think it is especially important for people like us (clergy, especially) to do a deep dive into the causes of the present efflorescence of this ancient human sin, but that isn’t the same thing as refusing to deal with it in the here and now.
If I may say so, perhaps a smidge of regret might be in order, for some, regarding any previous active or tacit support for the notion that the most frightening and dangerous person in America today is a police officer?
Step 1: disarm the general populace.
I’m a firm believer in the Second Amendment. You have a right to your own life. If an armed school employee had shot the shooter as he entered the school that would be fine with me. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Taking firearms away from law abiding citizens is not going to stop violent criminals from committing a crime. There were some social media users that were “bystanders” as well as some that worked with the Uvalde shooter. Some of his fellow employees at a fast-food restaurant nicknamed him “School shooter”.
In my experiences on the street most of the individuals I arrested to include arrests my fellow officers made did not start hitting felony homeruns the first time they stepped up to the plate. Most of them had rap sheets with a history of committing multiple crimes.
I’ve seen a lot of people on Ricochet become instant experts on how to deal with an active spree killer in an elementary school at a place they’ve never seen nor heard of before, relying on sketchy reports from a media who didn’t know much of what happened either, and who usually get the facts wrong at first in these crisis situations. There is a natural desire for people to get quick answers. I think it is best to wait for the investigation to reveal the accurate facts before making any solid judgements.
The facts already in evidence are an overwhelming indictment of the state of many police departments across America, and those who come to the defense of this obvious discrepancy show their colors.
The “investigation” is almost always some form of cover-up, especially when police and law enforcement, politics are involved. In this case, it might be so clear that we find out something close to the truth, but I doubt it.
On it’s face it is absolutely unacceptable.
The fact that you claim that people proposing immediate action – by cops with guns to save children in peril – requires some kind of “expertise”, is sadly hilarious.
I don’t care about the particular details. I already know what I think about this long-term, deep-rooted problem, and one case varies from another in insignificant ways. Weakness is a provocation — society is collapsing — the usual suspects are doing it on purpose.
This is just one more event in a long line of the same old crap, and the short-attention-span-theater is going mad over details.
I don’t care.
No it’s not. Demonstrate that investigations of crimes scenes are almost always some form of cover-up. And since when did politics become involved here?
It is not a good thing if you don’t care for truth or accuracy. Or details.