Hat tip to Suzanimal for the following:
Daily Mail said:
Did a delay in response give the gunman more time? Cops face questions over why it took three hours for SWAT teams to storm Orlando nightclub as police chief admits officers may have shot some of the VICTIMS
...Police Chief John Mina has also admitted that some of the victims may have been hit by officers' gun fire.
However he insisted it is a part of the investigation into the horrific attack.
He said: 'I will say that is all part of the investigation. But I will say when our SWAT officers, about eight or nine officers, opened fire, their backdrop was a concrete wall. And they were being fired upon, so that is all part of the investigation.'
The decisions made by Orlando police made them targets for scrutiny among experts in police tactics.
They said the lessons learned from other mass shootings show that officers must get inside swiftly — even at great risk — to stop the threat and save lives.
'We live in a different world. And action beats inaction 100 per cent of the time,' said Chris Grollnek, an expert on active-shooter tactics and a retired police officer and SWAT team member.
Authorities in Orlando say the situation changed from an active-shooter scenario to a hostage situation once gunman Mateen made it into one of the bathrooms where club-goers were hiding.
He first had a shootout with the off-duty officer at the club's entrance.
Then two other officers arrived and the firing continued.
Experts say there's a big difference between responding to a lone gunman and a shooter who has hostages.
In active-shooter situations, police are now trained to respond immediately, even if only one or two officers are available to confront the suspect.
In a hostage crisis, law enforcement generally tries to negotiate.
Once in the restroom, Mateen called 911 and made statements pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said Monday.
That's when the shooting stopped and hostage negotiators began talking with him, the chief said.
'We had a team of crisis negotiators that talked to the suspect, trying to get as much information as possible, what we could do to help resolve the situation... He wasn't asking a whole lot, and we were doing most of the asking,' Mina said.
But Mateen soon began talking about explosives and bombs, leading Mina to decide about 5am to detonate an explosive on an exterior wall to prevent potentially greater loss of life.
The explosives did not penetrate the wall completely, so an armored vehicle was used to punch a two-foot-by-three-foot hole in the wall about two feet from the ground.
'We knew there would be an imminent loss of life,' Mina said.
Hostages started running out, as did Mateen, who was killed in a shootout with SWAT team members.
It turned out there were no explosives.
...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4BaJ0Hz7h
Well, now. The cops had Mateen outnumbered three to one before he got inside, yet these three trained, experienced officers could not stop him.
They had Mateen on the telephone and seem to have known he was in a restroom, yet they did not send someone in to evacuate, they did not call the bartender and tell him to set off the fire alarm, they did not suggest that someone--anyone--inside yell, "FIRE!" Why not? Because yelling fire in a crowded public building is illegal, and it's entrapment for cops to advise someone to do an illegal thing?
There were innocents on the patio. They had a fire ladder truck, they had helicopters, and the wall surrounding the patio could not have been soundproof. A plumber with two ladders on his truck could have evacuated that patio. One guy with a sawzall could have evacuated that patio. Anyone with a car could have shouted, 'stay away from this wall' and knocked a hole in it with his or her car, and evacuated the patio. Apparently the people on the patio had the door barricaded. If that barricade had been torn down, some of the people inside could have been evacuated. But the plumber, or the guy with the sawzall, or the person with a car, was not allowed into the area by the cops. And the cops did not do these things either, or ask the firemen to do it. Why? Because their superiors had declared it a hostage situation, and regulations do not allow any breach of the perimeter during a hostage negotiation--even if there's no possible way the shooter can know it's happening?
If they had gained access to the patio door, they would have had a silent way in which was not the front door. Instead, they blew holes in the wall, or tried to, and then used a battering ram. Why? What is the purpose of using shock and awe tactics if you aren't competent to pull them off? What is the point of battering the hole you failed to create with your explosives, when the point of using explosives was to gain the element of surprise?
And why won't they say how many of the victims were shot not by the perp, but by the police?
If three cops are manning the door, but a guy carrying an unconcealed AR-freaking-15 cannot be denied entrance to the building, if the cops are just going to putz around for three hours and then do everything wrong, if the cops are so hamstrung by their own regulations and chain of command that they can't even pull hostages out of a patio, and in the end they are going to shoot innocents with as much abandon as the perpetrator himself, then why are we banning handguns in bars and talking about banning them everywhere else too?
One competent civilian could have ended this thing in the first two minutes. Which would not only have saved dozens of lives, but would have saved the Orlando Police Department the embarrassment of making complete asses of themselves. If only there had not been a law against carrying firearms in a bar. And all because the police are professionals, and we have to let them handle it.
Well. So much for that theory. Now. Can we do the sane thing yet?
