[via ammoland.com]
Details are emerging about the Orlando Pulse Massacre. It is clear that some of the first impressions were false.
First, there was not any initial exchange of fire inside of the club. Officers did not fire at the murderer in the club, or he at them, until the last few minutes, three hours later, when SWAT officers broke into the bathrooms through a wall.
There was an initial exchange of gunfire, but it was outside of the club. The off duty police officer/security officer quickly disengaged as the murderer entered the club while firing. It is precisely the scenario that John Lott has often predicted. If a security officer is known, a person planning a mass killing will determine a way to take them out with a surprise attack, find a way to bypass them, or avoid them.
Second, there was some time from the initial shooting until police mounted an armed response. The police response was very quick. Additional officers arrived at the scene, formed up, broke out a large window, and went in. But it still took time. It appears about six minutes passed from the initial shots until the police entered the Pulse club. During that period, the murderer was shooting and killing people inside the club. The shooting continued as the police entered.
Link to video from cell phone outside of the club, early in the shooting
Once in the club, the officers could not locate the murderer. They were uncertain how many there might be. They continued to hear shots, and determined that the shooter was in the bathroom area. They did not shoot at the murderer. It does not appear that he fired at them; and it does not seem that they “drove him into the bathroom area”.
Then they were ordered to wait for the SWAT team. It took about 15-20 minutes for SWAT to get there. We do not know if more shots were fired during that period.
Here is the timeline put together by the Daily Mail. From dailymail.co.uk:
2:02am – Sunday, June 12 – Suspect Omar Mateen tries to enter Pulse nightclub armed with assault rifle and and handgun and is spotted by a security guard.The two exchange fire outside the club – but Mateen manages to enter the nightclub, holding 320 people, while still firing.First 911 call received by Orlando Police Department.2:04am – First police officers, including Brandon Cornwell, arrive at the scene.2:08am – FBI says officers entered the club and ‘engaged’ the shooter.2:09am – Pulse nightclub posts a message to their Facebook desperately telling those inside ‘Everyone get out of pulse and keep running’.2:35am – Mateen calls 911 and pledges allegiance to ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.4:21am – Police rip out an air conditioning unit, creating a hole through which some people escape.4:29am – Rescued victims tell police the shooter said he was going to put four vests with bombs on hostages within 15 minutes.5.02am – Three hours after the first shooting began, a SWAT team use armored vehicle and explosives to breach the bathroom wall. SWAT officers manage to free 30 hostages who dashed to safety.5:15am – The shooter is shot at and is confirmed as being ‘down’.8:00am – Officials with the FBI deem the incident to be ‘domestic terrorism’.
Here is an account by Officer Brandon Cornwell. He is the only officer who went inside the club to give a public comment so far. From washingtonpost.com:
ORLANDO — After an initial burst of fire between Omar Mateen and a security guard at the Pulse nightclub, a group of five or six police officers arrived on the scene within minutes, broke through a large glass window and entered the club as the killing of 49 people was underway inside, according to a Belle Isle, Fla., police officer who was among the first responders.
Officer Brandon Cornwell, 25, said the ad-hoc team spent the first seconds in the dimly lit club “trying to locate exactly where the shooter was — we kept hearing people scream and shots fired.”
He and the other officers followed the sounds to the bathroom area, where Mateen was now holed up. But instead of entering the bathroom, the officers aimed their assault rifles toward the area and were told by commanders to hold their position as the sounds of gunfire stopped, according to Cornwell. And so they waited “15 or 20 minutes — could’ve been longer” — until the SWAT team arrived, he said. Cornwell never saw Mateen.
This is worth noting in discussing the massacre. Those opposed to armed self defense have claimed that security confronted the shooter inside the club, but it made no difference, as they were unable to stop him. What seems likely, with Cornwell’s report, is that no armed person confronted the shooter in the club until the SWAT team ultimately broke in through that wall.
The shooter was ready to engage the security at the entrance of the club, and was able to shoot his way in. It would be several minutes later before armed police entered the Pulse.
If any of the patrons inside the club had been armed, there appear to have been many opportunities when the shooter could have been engaged and the death toll reduced.
All of the details and timing will eventually be made public. The time of every gun shot is likely to be analyzed. The multiple communications, 911 calls and police response insure that a record of the situation can be put together, but it will take time to decipher it. Numerous survivors should be interviewed and their stories added to the mix.
In order to fight these sort of incidents, it’s important to understand how they actually happen. Six minutes is a long time for a person with a defensive pistol to draw it, identify the threat, and engage.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Your tax dollars, so very hard at work.
Are the cops here seeing why they’re increasingly held in contempt?
…Why we need body cams on all LE.
Accusations of LE misconduct will drop, and the attitudes of those interacting with LE will change, when they know they’ll be on Candid Camera…
I fail to see how body cams would have changed the outcome of this. Those officers who responded did enter the building to face the threat. they were ORDERED to vacate and wait for SWAT. Those radio transmissions are a matter of public record and should be released.
As an earlier article on TTAG, interview of the EMT said…if your wearing a badge and the gunman gets the drop on you, there better be a pile of your brass next to your body.
Cops serve themselves and protect their pensions and their lives by having citizens doing the dying. F every last one of them.
Jeez…. And you wonder why a cop would not want to risk his/her life for you? If I was cop and heard this all day, I’d count my days to retirement too.
SHUUUUURE body cams will be GREAT for privacy and due process. Hook the thinks into FirstNet. Wonderful.
In Minnesota the Police Chiefs just bamboozled the Legislature (donks and elephants both) into requiring that video of even of a good, thorough beating caught on video into SECRET DATA if they do it in your home so long as they cause no permanent impairment. How is that for a liberal state?
The police are not morally responsible for your safety. Their primary duty is to enforce the laws and investigate crimes. The problem here is that we have come to depend on the government for everything to the point where we have decided that private individuals should be disallowed from defending themselves properly.
I know all this. I’ve known all this since waaaay back in the early 90’s.
My response to all of that is this:
If that’s all I’m paying for, then we should be paying cops a whole lot less than we are, and they shouldn’t get a pension plan.
Maybe protocol should include pension removal for failure to take out the active shooter and / or rescue victims in a timely manner. I bet you’d see real change with that. Extend that to Congress for infringing on Constitutional rights, too.
Some good olde-fashioned Donald Trump “You’re fired!!” could be just what the Dr. ordered.
Exactly. They are called law enforcement, not crime prevention. Enforcing the law means punishing people after they break it (because what is law but codified punishments?), NOT preventing them from breaking it in the first place.
I second this call for Street Judges a-la Judge Dredd….. No courts, no jury of peers, no due process…. Just apprehension and punishment. (sarc)
This was a terrible response by law enforcement. I will not even attempt to defend it. I will however state that the active shooter response protocol has changed, and that police are not supposed to wait for SWAT. Responding LE are supposed to enter ASAP in 2 or 4 person teams and clear rooms with the cross / buttonhook method just like military room clearing.
I’m not sure if the police were not properly trained or if they “just needed to get home at the end of their shift.” Either one is inexcusable. I do know that some police have not had the new active shooter training.
There’s plenty of blame to go around:
1. Mateen
2. ISIS
3. Obama admin blaming the NRA
4. Slow police response
5. Hillary blaming the NRA
6. Press blaming the NRA
7. Voters dumb enough to blame the NRA
8. “Gun Free” club rules
9. The “it can’t happen to me” mindset
10. The “police will protect me” mindset
Maybe even TTAG commenters who can’t fathom taking a gun to a nightclub. I do. Some will say I’m irresponsible for doing so.
The list continues.
If it was me I’d go in. But honestly, there are cops out there who’d be happy to wait all day.
the officers did enter the nightclub. they were ordered to vacate and wait for SWAT. So if the active shooter protocol is to engage as soon as possible, why was it rescinded? Was the supervisor inept or did he/she fail to read that particular memo (i.e. inept)?
When SWAT finally got around to it, they still hid behind armor to punch holes in the wall and shoot at the bad guy from behind cover.
Protocol ain’t nothing but paper.
Protocol seems to change once the shit hits the fan. You would do the same fucking evacuate thing the second the order came down. You guys push the mythical hero bullshit on the public. Cops lives matter more than any 100 “Civilians”. Whatever.
I’ve already gone in solo after an “active stabbing” suspect with no radio Comm. And got him. I’ve gone after carjackers armed with handguns solo. Got some of them, too. I got poison oak chasing a carjacking suspect through the brush near Dodger Stadium. The K-9 got that guy. You’re welcome to try and tell me, over the Internet, what I can and can’t do. I know what I’ve done, and what I’m ready to do.
As to these guys, they f$&@ed up. But it’s government. They can pour millions of gallons of toxic waste into the Colorado River and no one gets fired or jailed. I suspect the same thing will happen here as there. Or Fast and Furious. Or Benghazi.
Hell, we might promote the Benghazi FUBAR to POTUS.
You may be the rare exception.
He is.
Most cops are peaceable citizens with guns and badges who pray that they don’t find any trouble durring their shift. Departments try their best to weed out the weak but most people who have a say in such things want “community police” or “officer friendly” and not “Harry Callaghan”…… That includes a lot of people who comment here. They want “officer friendly” and wonder why they don’t charge the gunman in the club. The trick with most departments is to find an “officer friendly” who will charge in…… Then again some will criticise “officer friendly” charging in. I don’t thinks cops can win either way.
As public servants, I expect Police Officers to follow the policy their department has set. As a taxpayer, I expect that policy to be the most effective actions that we can develop to keep the population of that jurisdiction free and safe (priorities in that order).
In other words, do what the Taxpayer says, and that damn well ought to be take the risk and go in.
Unless the policy is to not go in. Then you complain that the cops violated policy when they do go in. It sounds like the cops were within policy in Orlando. Unless disobeying orders is a common policy? …. Good policy sets guidelines. It doesn’t micromanage…… Unfortunately most policies are micromanaging in nature.
The OPD cowardice is stunning,But thats ok because they all got home safe. what is the use of having the badge if you are too afraid to take any kind of action. We all know that police have no issues shooting unarmed people , But when they are really needed they just wait on the sidelines while this guy kills people. If the first people there actually did what they were paid to do or what anyone who had a weapon and any bravery would have done the death would have been less . I agree with you 100%
We can trust them to protect us……………really.
Chris Cornell sang it well enough:
“Arm yourself because no-one else here will save you.”
Mark my words..it will come out that most of the people or at least a large chunk died because they bled out laying there for HOURS. I want to see details on why nothing was done to remove the wounded….even at the risk of being under fire.
75% of police are cowards. The only act against unarmed people, woman, children, and dogs.
*citation needed*
Exactly, where’s he getting this delusion that 25% of cops are brave and decent human beings?
Publius for the win!
You should take point in a fire fight.
You should also become a cop unless your already one.
And if you are….you should take point in a fire fight with no intell and soft armor with your pistol….good luck……clock is ticking…..go!
Clearly states they had rifles above. Also, a couple of the LEOs that I know have a plate carrier and a rifle in their vehicles whenever theyre at work. Depends on where you work if theyll let use a personal rifle or issued.
News flash: somebody is always on point. And in the army, you put the dumb single guy with no kids on point so you’re not out much when he takes the first bullet. But you have more guys behind him to engage the enemy while the guy on point takes fire.
Yeah, being first in the door sucks, but it’s all part of the job, and young guys like to be heroes. Schools aren’t named after cowards.
Hey Priest, I didn’t join the police department because I don’t like dodging bullets. These guys did join the police department. Voluntarily. I do my job every day, including the unpleasant parts. Since when is it bad to expect cops to do their fucking jobs.
All I’m saying is that everybody is trying to judge these cops without specific access to all the details………..let’s all stay civil.
The gay folks bleeding out on the floor probably thought the assembled SWAT cops were engaging in a remarkable act of cowardice. I would agree.
I wonder if Omar had selling pot they wouldve responded faster
Considering that the timeline has a cop responding 2 minutes after the first shots rang out, I doubt it.
I would love to hear how many shots the off-duty officer fired at the terrorist. I suspect a very low number. I also suspect he went to cover quick instead of going after him inside the club.
Atleast one individual was removed from the dance hall by the police and was taken to an area hospital as it was reported by the victim and the officer that he pulled him to safety. The officer said that most did not respond (meaning that they were already dead) when they entered the night club.
I heard one person who was shot being interviewed that he hit the deck and laid there for 20-30 minutes playing dead…then he was shot. Then laid for a couple hours until the police evac’d him. Perhaps the person mentioned by previous post who was evac’d right away was near the door.
I don’t think any of this is slamming the cops…they were “following orders”…but more towards how this should have been handled at the brass level. It needs to be investigated to see what changes in SOP need to be made. The SOP for school shootings have changed for waiting out the shooter to making immediate entry.
Like I said..I’d like to know why, if the gunman was barricaded in a bathroom as stated, some effort wasn’t made to evac the wounded or even check them. The guy interviewed as obviously alive and could have been helped. Yes, there was risk in moving people in to get the wounded out but that’s why we have police and firefighters…to take risks to save lives.
We need to look into policies, etc the will enable wounded people to be evac’d under fire…this might mean forming units of swat members trained as medics, purchase of new equipment, etc…but it needs to be done.
“…but that’s why we have police and firefighters…to take risks to save lives.” Nope. They are being paid the absolute bare minimum the community knows it can get away with. Some, SWAT, etc., volunteer for more. But, my point is we, as a nation, have come to expect someone else besides ourselves to take on our problems. The all encompassing “Them” and “They”. You know, “they” ought to do something. Time to stand up. Should have been a defensive gun use.
Baldwin,
“Nope. They are being paid the absolute bare minimum the community knows it can get away with.”
Do you have citations for that? In my neck of the woods, it isn’t uncommon for EMTs and/or police to make over $100k per year with a little overtime. That doesn’t sound like “absolute bare minimum” to me.
UncommonSense…. You should be a cop or paramedic then you too can make all that money for a super easy job with no responsiblility or threat to your personal safety…… Now give us all an elaborate set of excuses why you aren’t. Or screed on about some rhetorical nonsense while avoiding the question.
California richard,
Not sure where you are coming from. I simply commented that many police or EMS, who typically have nothing more than a high school education, are making quite a bit more money than a “bare minimum”.
As for hard work and risk, I have participated in an activity that is MUCH more difficult (mentally and physically strenuous) and statistically MUCH more dangerous than police or EMS work. I won’t say exactly what that is. I will say that a simple oversight can lead to certain death. Fortunately, I managed to beat the odds.
Mecha75, there have been several people injured or that were there at the event who report that they called 911 and told them they were injured, who then waited the hours before they were rescued. Quite of few of them have been on the news.
Exactly the same as 101 California Street. People died while cops waited.
Jackob asks, “I want to see details on why nothing was done to remove the wounded.”
According to CNN and at least one local news station, “From approximately 2:30-5 a.m. ET:, officers continued to rescue people from inside the club while the gunman was in the bathroom.”
I continue to believe that the biggest lesson to learn from the Orlando Pulse shooting is this. The police cannot protect you, even if they are there. It is incumbent upon each individual to protect themselves.
I refuse to blame the individual officers who entered the building and held. I understand that ‘following orders’ is not validation for heinous acts but I do understand that in times of stress decisions must be made quickly. A gunfight in what I’m assuming we’re very tight quarters( in the bathroom area) with innocents in close proximity is a challenging scenario to say the least. I understand why this would be decision would be made but I also criticize those making the orders for their decisions in the hope these mistakes aren’t repeated.
You said it right. You can’t count on someone else to protect#1.
Even unarmed in that bathroom it still boggles my mind that no-one had the presence of mind to meet that a hole at the door and fight before he could start shooting. Another lesson learned. Get to safe place. Defend door with whatever you have at your disposal.
The irony is, even if there was a DGU (or multiple), I wonder what percent chance the police may have shot the wrong person considering they didn’t know where the shooter was and if he had accomplices…
SMH.
Even if good guys waited for the first mag change to take him down, that would be -70 casualties. Even if 3 good guys got hit by cops, that’s -67 casualties. Almost any scenario with a CCWer would have been better than what happened.
tjlarson2k,
The odds of police improperly shooting a concealed carrier are extremely low since the event would be over and shooting finished before police arrived. The four most probable outcomes are:
(1) Concealed carrier promptly incapacitates spree killer.
(2) Concealed carrier promptly engages spree killer and spree killer promptly surrenders or commits suicide.
(3) Concealed carrier promptly engages spree killer and spree killer promptly leaves the area.
(4) Spree killer promptly incapacitates concealed carrier.
A fifth outcome is possible although quite unlikely: the concealed carrier and the spree killer become engaged in a prolonged firefight/standoff for several minutes at which point police join the fray. This almost never happens. And the one example where I know that it did happen, the police managed to NOT engage the concealed carrier and they DID engage the spree killer. (See Trolley Square Mall attack in Utah in 2007 or so.)
Chris Cornell sang it well enough:
“Arm yourself because no-one else here will save you.”
There in minutes (when seconds count). Just in time FOR THEM to call SWAT.
The cops did enter the building pre-SWAT. they were ORDERED to vacate and stand down. TTAG may be critical of LEOs, but lets atleast not stoop to mimicking the gun grabbers and make hyperbolic statements without any facts.
So my statement is only half 100% correct and half 75% correct?
I personally only have one rule on this account, and that is, NO MATTER WHAT YOUR STATION, JOB, PERSONALITY, OR NATIONALITY, YOU WILL NEVER EQUAL MORE THAN ONE (1) PERSON. HOLD UP THE FIRST FINGER OF YOUR RIGHT HAND. THAT DIGIT = YOUR MAXIMUM # OF “PEOPLE” YOU WILL EVER EQUAL. HANG A BADGE, A UNIFORM, A STETHESCOPE, A PRESIDENTIAL SEAL, OR THE POPE’S RING ON IT AND IT WILL STILL ONLY EQUAL ONE. IF YOU EVER COME TO THINK THAT YOU = 1+ THEN YOU EQUAL ZERO.
THEREFORE, if you’re a cop, you asked for a job to SERVE your constituency. The job will NEVER make you 1+. HOWEVER, as long as you remember that (permanently) I can safely treat you like 1+. If you do your job, and serve your people well, then I would gladly take a bullet for you, so that you could make it home to your family, and continue to serve your community.
That’s it.
The cops inside could have claimed they couldn’t hear their radios. They were more than happy to hear and obey the evacuation orders.
Every cop got to go home safe that night, so this police operation must be considered an overwhelming success! Medals for bravery will be awarded just as soon as all the dead are buried.
I mean one of them did take a round to the head.
if it was a glancing blow off the helmet, then it wasn’t to the head as it would have passed right on by (close enough to shave though and close enough to require fresh undies).
It wasn’t a “glancing blow”, it was a full-on shot just above the brim at the forehead. A couple of inches lower and it would have been a bridge of the nose shot. He was very lucky. Pictures of the helmet and the bruise on his forehead have been regularly circulated.
I’m still a bit confused by who ‘ordered’ the response halted and the reasoning. If he stopped shooting and everything turned into a hostage scenario maybe that’s why, but answers need to come out about exactly what happened there. But for the purposes of guns, it doesn’t really matter: In the first 6 minutes before any sufficient police response was available I bet plenty of people were killed. 6 minutes or 6 hours is not an acceptable time to have to wait unarmed to die. And yet the answer we get is “more gun control.”
THIS narrative will be WIDELY discredited. Why don’t cha know only the po-leece can protect you serf?
With that kind of response time. the shooter armed with a single action revolver could have wrought the same kind of destruction.
“During the Senate hearing, Turkey’s Ataturk airport was attacked by suicide bombers, killing dozens, and al-Qaeda released a special edition of their English-language publication Inspire Guide urging lone-wolf attackers to target the “Anglo-Saxon community” so their acts won’t be misinterpreted as “hate crimes” but rather what they really are: religiously motivated terrorist attacks. How painfully ironic that Islamist terrorists are so flummoxed by the liberal West’s insistence on ignoring their motivations that they had to make an official statement to clarify things.”
http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/29/senate-hearing-while-feds-scrubbed-references-to-islam-terrorists-escaped-notice/
How it could have happened, no, how it should have happened.
2:02am – Sunday, June 12 – Suspect Omar Mateen tries to enter Pulse nightclub armed with assault rifle and and handgun and is spotted by a security guard.
The two exchange fire outside the club – but Mateen manages to enter the nightclub, holding 320 people, while still firing.
First 911 call received by Orlando Police Department.
2:03am — Legal concealed carrier(s) inside club engage and kill Mateen.
2:04am – First police officers, including Brandon Cornwell, arrive at the scene.
2:07am — Mateen pronounced dead at scene.
—-
Better yet, it should never have happened if the FBI had been able to determine he was a terrorist with one of the two (seriously, two? WTF?) chances that they had to investigate him.
This is what we should be talking about, we are at great risk to terrorist attack because we are soft, we are at war but are too oblivious or ignorant to notice, and the .gov is incapable of identifying who is a terrorist until after they attack. So tell me again how great it is, hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and how the .gov has a vetting process to weed out the terrorists among them? And again about how I don’t need to be armed?
Just read this pretty damning timeline of the events
http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/06/28/orlando-police-held-positions-as-islamic-terrorist-reloaded/
There was a lot of wounded who were actually calling for help…and then bled out. The more info like this that comes out the more this looks like a total cluster by the police response. Hopefully, this will be studied like Columbine and new tactics created. In active shooter situations the main goal should be engaging the shooter…yes, this is risky…yes it puts police officer lives at risk…but that’s the job. No doubt in my mind that if this guy would have been aggressively hunted down lives would have been saved.
So in case of emergency, the anti-gunners rather have us rely on security…. wait for the officers…. who have to wait on SWAT for their own emergency. Dumbfounding logic.
So where/when did that one officer get shot and saved by his helmet? According to this timeline, if they never engaged the shooter, the only other possibility I can think of is friendly fire due to multiple entries.
I would suspect after Omar emerged through the hole in the bathroom wall and engaged the well covered SWAT boys and girls.
Interesting. I’ve been under the impression from everything I’ve read/seen that that happened right out of the gate. I suppose I didn’t give enough thought to fluid and changing details.
Dean,
this may be true…”All of the details and timing will eventually be made public.” Some Columbine records were sealed til 2027, no doubt to protect , , , ,
Eventually can be a long time. . . .
Look up “Carthage nursing home shooting” on Wikipedia. The Deputy responded right away, he is an LEO not a cop.
How many more people would have died if he had not responded RIGHT AWAY!
Thinking back to the McDonalds massacre in San Diego,….my thoughts then were “why didn’t 1 or 2 brave cops go in and put the shooter down, permanently? The guy continued to shoot unarmed innocents for crying out loud! Oh that’s right, they were waiting for orders or SWAT. I call Bullshit on that. Ignore orders and go in and settle it. How those SD cops can live with what they didn’t do is beyond me. The cops responding to the Pulse shooter had him confined to the restroom; at least take up positions outside the restroom door and when shooting within recommenced, go in and fight it out, come what may. Do they not remember PROTECT and SERVE? Don’t give me the BS that they are not obligated to go in harms way. If they had done so and settled it, what wonders it could have done for cop and community relations.
SCOTUS has ruled a few times that the cops are under no duty to risk their lives for yours.
So why are they cops?
That’s easy. The paycheck. The health care and other benefits. The lifetime pension after 25 years (that’s retiring in the late 40’s for most). Millions of bucks all told. Plus, they are mythical, hero cops selflessy serving the public. Why risk that?
And the special rules. The special consideration(s) from other cops, that allow too many cops to get away with breaking regulations and laws without consequence.
“It’s good to be the king.”
Just take a look at the current sex scandal in the Oakland (CA) PD right now. The woman at the center of the whole thing claims she’s had sex (of some form) with at least 30 cops in the Oakland PD – and some of those men had to have sex with her while she was under the age of 18.
The facts are, the officers did as trained. They took the bad guy to a point where they were no longer able to pursue him without it being a suicide mission. He was no longer firing, he was looking to make his name. So it turned from an active shooter situation into a barricaded hostage situation. Very different dynamics. They turn it over to SWAT and negotiators, where it played out, without shots fired, for almost 3 hours. When negotiators and SWAT suspected he was going to go hot and begin killing again, they proceeded with the breach and rescue, where he finally died. Meanwhile, officers and others were evacuating all others from the rest of the lounge, excepting the dead.
I see one of the Orlando SWAT cops is visiting the forum. Thanks for stopping by and laying out the perfect narrative.
Whenever the police retreat or wait, people die. Remember the San Yesidro, CA McDonalds where SWAT officers watched him kill more people while they waited for their Lieutenant? Or 101 California Street mass shooting in San Francisco, CA where the police kept EMS out until the entire building was cleared and many saveable victims bleed out. Or Columbine H.S. in Colorado where the police first engaged at a distance and then retreated out of danger JUST LIKE the police retreated in Orlando.
Why? Because the police commander in Orlsndo was afraid of bomb fragments. Police work is inherently dsngerous. Even a deskbound Commander should understand that fact.
I didn’t read all the comments, but I have to wonder why the lights weren’t brought up? Every bar or club I’ve been in has good lighting for when it’s needed/wanted, so why muck around in the dark?
Probably because there was a Muslim terrorist shooting a semi-automatic long gun with 30 round magazines at anything that moved.
That’s why the lights should have been on: the killer could operate just fine in the dim; anything that moved was a target. The good guys needed to be able to tell which human shape was their target.
Dean, this makes no sense:
“The off duty police officer/security officer quickly disengaged as the murderer entered the club while firing. It is precisely the scenario that John Lott has often predicted. If a security officer is known, a person planning a mass killing will determine a way to take them out with a surprise attack, find a way to bypass them, or avoid them.”
“Disengaged” does not mean the security guard was “taken out” or “bypassed” or “avoided”. So what exactly is your point here?
The off duty police officer/security guard was supposedly out looking for a underage person who had somehow gotten in the club, then back out again, when the first shots were fired. I would call that bypassing. He heard the shots being fired, then is supposed to have gone back toward the parking lot, then engaged the Jihadi at the main entrance. I do not see any indication that the Jihadi was hindered in entering the Pulse.
It is clear that Adam Grueler only reacted after the first shots were fired, and he had to move some distance to do so.
I want to see the details of this. So far the released timeline just might support the contention of an early gunfight. The officer involved, Adam Gruler, has not released any statements. The Orlando P.D. has said there was an early exchange of fire; but that Gruler never entered the club, at least until well after the officers entered at 02:08, and he may not have gone into the club until much later, although he continued to report on shooting going on and multiple casualties.
I am attempting to find out more details, but there is a real info clampdown on this event. Some of this was found out after this article was already published.
Here, I’ve fixed the timeline for you based on everything I’ve read so far. The excact timing is imperfect, and I have had to fill out the blanks in two places with supposition, but it is the best account of what’s happened that I am aware of. My personal biases should be obvious.
2:02am – Sunday, June 12 – Suspect Omar Mateen tries to enter Pulse nightclub armed with assault rifle and and handgun and is spotted by a security guard. The two exchange fire outside the club – but Mateen manages to enter the nightclub (which held 320 people) while still firing. Mateen shoots approximately 70 people. Some are immediately killed, most lay on the floor and bleed out over course of the next 20-30 minutes. First 911 call received by Orlando Police Department.
2:04am – First police officers, including Brandon Cornwell, arrive at the scene.
2:08am – FBI says officers entered the club and ‘engaged’ the shooter, but are ultimately told to fall back.
2:09am – Pulse nightclub posts a message to their Facebook desperately telling those inside ‘Everyone get out of pulse and keep running’.
~2:20am: Mateen is driven into the bathroom area by police. Here is where he accomplishes the majority of his fatalities. In bathroom “A” 31 people have packed themselves shoulder-to-shoulder in the stalls to “hide”. Mateen stands in the doorway and fires indiscriminately through the stalls into the tightly packed mass of bodies. Each round fired likely penetrates multiple victims. Eventually he will walk along the row of stalls firing over the door into each stall. Out of the 31 people reported to be in that bathroom, ultimately only one will survive. The rest are either killed instantly, or lay in a pile of human bodies, bleeding out onto the bathroom floor.
2:35am – Mateen enters bathroom “B” and takes hostages. The shooting stops. Police are ordered to fall back. Mateen calls 911 and pledges allegiance to ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. At this point around 20 of the initial 70 gunshot victims have bled out and died on the floor of the main room – 27 minutes after police had first entered the building.
3:00am – All gunshot victims in bathroom “A” have slowly bled out on the bathroom floor, and died, 52 minutes after police first entered the building. SWAT teams stand outside the club and “negotiates” with Mateen.
4:21am – Police rip out an air conditioning unit, creating a hole through which some people escape.
4:29am – Rescued victims tell police the shooter said he was going to put four vests with bombs on hostages within 15 minutes.
5.02am – Three hours after the first shooting began, a SWAT team use armored vehicle and explosives to breach the bathroom wall. SWAT officers manage to free 30 hostages who dashed to safety. There is speculation on the internet that SWAT may have shot innocents during this confrontation, but no evidence has emerged to support that theory to date.
5:15am – The shooter is shot at and is confirmed as being ‘down’.
8:00am – Officials with the FBI deem the incident to be ‘domestic terrorism’
When minutes count SWAT is only hours away.
Take your safety into your own hands and don’t rely on others. Arm yourself and your family and train. Don’t be a statistic.
At least the cops went home safely that night.
Not to criticize police, but the police who showed up ARMED were told to stand down while DEFENSELESS people were slaughtered. THIS is why lawful citizens should be able to CCW anywhere in America. The police cannot be everywhere and won’t always interdict immediately, as this case proves.
Now we learn that the FBI is telling state & local agencies to deny public requests for information:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/pulse-orlando-nightclub-shooting/os-fbi-letter-law-enforcement-20160629-story.html
The FBI wasn’t even there on the scene until it was all over. Where do they gain the powers to tell the agencies who were on the scene how they should respond to the press?
Bottom line, the police cannot protect us. They are bound by bureaucratic policies set up by people who will never be there. They do not protect and serve, they simply clean up and write reports and do usually catch the bad guy after the fact only to have him released by the courts.
In this case, they waited three hours while the sheep were murdered or bled out from their wounds. Sorry, been a probation officer working daily with police and know the deal. They cannot and will not protect us, but they will arrest us if the DA decides we didn’t really need to shoot the guy trying to rob us at gunpoint or rape our wives, and will confiscate our legally purchased guns if the government tells them to.
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