Originally Posted by
Coyotesfan97
One early morning about 0330 hours we had a hostage barricade in a small one bedroom/two room apartment with two females and three kids locked in a bedroom with the drugged suicidal male outside in the family room area threatening to break down the door and kill them all. Intel was he was armed with a 1911. Dispatch was on the phone with one of the victims. The Officers there were mostly new with a newer LT. They basically had set up a firing line perimeter and the LT had no plan to make entry if shooting started inside. LT believed it didn’t meet protocols for an active shooter entry.
One of my K9 partners was already on-scene, he had notified the SWAT commander and the callout was getting started. When I got there I started gearing up for an entry. I talked to my partner who was putting on his heavy stuff too. We were basically going to ignore the patrol LT and move up to LCC (last cover and concealment) and make entry if the suspect started shooting or breaching the bedroom door. We had one other SWAT guy who was a lateral from another agency that was going to go with us. So basically three of us were planning on telling the patrol LT to fuck off based on tactical being on the way and do a small HRT if needed.
As we were moving up to where we were going to stage the suspect exited the apartment, complied, and was taken into custody so it all ended up being a moot point. The debrief was heated. The patrol LT and the Sergeant still were arguing it wasn’t an active shooter in a public place and they wouldn’t have made entry if the suspect started shooting victims. We argued it was and we weren’t willing to have five victims shot and killed while we stood outside. There was another LT there who agreed with us but he wasn’t in charge. So it’s possible to have someone in charge who’s willing to let five people die because it’s not policy.
This was a pretty specific incident where the details allowed a very fast response on entry. From the layout we probably could’ve engaged the suspect when the door was breached. We were also aware we were looking at some possible bad times for not listening to the IC.