SWAT Team Heroically Ends 6 Hour Standoff with Empty Apartment

If they are not moving or making a noise you may not spot them or they may not be there.
 
It is almost as though the apartment was actually empty, and the police foolishly waited 6 hours to find that out.
 
Thats the trouble you can not tell for sure which is so funny.
 
It was so dangerous that the residents were "evacuated" to within sight of the complex:

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While the Dallas police held a convention outside:

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I'm not clear on why this needed a swat team in the first place, though. How do you even get into a standoff in the first place if no one's there?

I'd be interested to hear more details about the lead-up to this.
 
I'm not clear on why this needed a swat team in the first place, though. How do you even get into a standoff in the first place if no one's there?

I'd be interested to hear more details about the lead-up to this.

They assume that someone is inside and there is no quick way of proving that there is no one inside.

As I said above it is better for the police to be standing around like fools than kicking down doors and going in with guns blazing.
 
Cops today are so brave.

Tasering little girls until they pass out, beating homeless men to death while they scream for mercy, and having armed standoffs with empty houses.

Barney Fife would be proud.
 
Can you blame them for being so incompetent that they didn't determine after 6 hours that the apartment was empty?

Hey at least they didnt go in with guns blazing and hundreds of bullets being fired.
I would say that is a good thing at no one was accidentally killed.
 
I'm pretty sure there is a middle ground between gross incompetence and psychopathic behavior.
 
I'm pretty sure there is a middle ground between gross incompetence and psychopathic behavior.

You might be, and I might be, but militarized police teams and their backers clearly are not.


Anyway, I'm mystified as well about how they failed to determine that the apartment was empty for six hours. I assume a tactical/situational reason of some sort - the suspected armed occupants were possibly hidden by interior brick walls or something which would have prevented the usual reconnaissance techniques. I'm no fan of SWAT teams, but going by news reports they typically are not morons AND badly-trained AND failing to follow procedures.
 
well, this team managed to confiscate tomato plants on a marihuana raid, so i'm not surprised by anything.
but don't cops usually scream at apartments to force it to surrender?
and failing that, shoot tear gas canisters inside to smoke people out.
did they wait 6 hours to for robocop to show up?
what did they DO all that time?
 
According to the articles, they did scream at the apartment demanding that it surrender. They also locked down two nearby schools. I guess it finally dawned on someone that they had to finally end their siege at 4 PM so the kids could be taken home.
 
well, this team managed to confiscate tomato plants on a marihuana raid, so i'm not surprised by anything.
No, it was not. The tomato raid was performed by Arlington SWAT, this one was Dallas SWAT. Same region, but different team, staff, commanders, and the like.
 
No, it was not. The tomato raid was performed by Arlington SWAT, this one was Dallas SWAT. Same region, but different team, staff, commanders, and the like.

My Bad.
That is actually even more disturbing...
 
There seems to really be no difference among the modern day storm troopers.
 
well, this team managed to confiscate tomato plants on a marihuana raid, so i'm not surprised by anything.
but don't cops usually scream at apartments to force it to surrender?
and failing that, shoot tear gas canisters inside to smoke people out.
did they wait 6 hours to for robocop to show up?
what did they DO all that time?

Let me rephrase the issue in another manner.

The issue involving the six hour standoff is a case of the police potentially being overly cautious before raiding the apartment. The police needed to ensure the safety of officers, nearby people, the general public, and, to a degree, that of any suspected gun men fortified in the apartment. That caution is likely the key reason why it took so long to raid the building. Obviously the police should be as careful and as cautious as possible to avoid harming people.

Consider if there were people in there and the negotiations went on for ten hours. That would obviously be a lengthy amount of time, but I think people would be hard pressed to call foul if the ten hour negotiation reached a peaceful resolution. That sort of peaceful resolution should be the goal for any similar situation.

Here the police didn't hear anything from the people believed inside. In that case, I'm not sure there's a clear answer on how long they should wait before raiding the building. There could be a serious danger to people if someone was asleep in the building and was suddenly woken up by the police barging in, or if people inside made a choice to simply never communicate with the police or show their numbers.

I don't know if what the rules the Dallas police follow before ending negotiations for a raid. I don't know if there's a manual or best practice involved. Maybe there is a manual that says after six hours with no response it is appropriate to conduct the raid or maybe they have to make up the rules as they go along.

I do think that caution was the by-word of the day. I have a hard time faulting the police by being cautious and making public safety a key consideration. That's not to say that six hours in front of an empty apartment isn't absurd, but that absurdity only exists because the police want to protect people.

I haven't seen any indication of incompetence in the police. I don't see where they erred. That the result was absurd does not mean the police were idiots. Maybe there was incompetence, but I have yet to see evidence of that. Absent that incompetence, I think the worst we can say is that they took their sweet time in raiding the building, a decision that was likely made out of safety concerns. Without an indication of incompetence, I think the issue ultimately comes down to one of personal opinion. You think they took too long. That's fine. I don't necessarily think the same way.

As for the mechanics of why it took so long, consider that the police need a warrant to raid a building in this situation. Six hours seems a bit longer than it should take to obtain a warrant for a situation like this, but may be not an exceedingly long time.

Come to think of it, the police would also need a warrant to conduct any surveillance that breaches the walls of the apartment. If the warrant took, say, three hours to obtain then two hours of attempting to conduct electronic surveillance and one hour to plan and conduct the actual entrance may not be unreasonable. Hour one might be a thermal scan and hour two a fiber optic system for video surveillance.

I don't know why it took so long. In any case, I would rather the police make it a point of policy to err in favor of caution than otherwise.
 
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