Posts Tagged ‘Swat’
Machine guns stolen from training site for Los Angeles SWAT unit
A cache of Los Angeles Police Department submachine guns and handguns was stolen last week from a secured building used by the department’s SWAT unit, raising fears that the weapons, which police had altered to fire only blanks, could be converted back to lethal use, police officials confirmed…
Members of the SWAT unit, which specializes in hostage rescues and other high-risk situations, were scheduled to train at the facility Thursday, Downing said. A police officer arriving at the building around 9 a.m. Thursday discovered the weapons were missing, according to Downing. The officer also found electrical equipment stacked near a back door, indicating the burglars may still have been working and fled when the officer arrived.
Downing said the building, although not a guarded LAPD facility, was considered secure. To get to the weapons, the thieves cut through bolt locks on an outside door and two internal doors and forced their way through a metal roll gate, he said.
“I guess ‘secure’ is all relative now,” he said. “It’s embarrassing…. It’s a lesson learned…”
The building, which once housed textile companies, was donated to the department. Inside, the department put up walls and made other changes in order to create realistic scenarios for training exercises. They did not install an alarm system or surveillance cameras…
The obvious concern is that whoever stole the weapons will convert them from firing blanks to using live ammunition. Downing acknowledged that was “definitely a possibility” but said that to do so would require an understanding of the inner workings of the weapons.
Gun experts and online tutorials suggest, however, that the process is relatively simple and requires only a few parts. The company that manufactures the conversion kits used by the LAPD has an instructional video on its website that walks a viewer through the steps of returning an MP-5 to its original form in about five minutes.
Har. There’s a certain level of being “important” which conveys to some a conviction that they are untouchable. Who would dare to challenge their superior status not only in the community at large; but, among police officers.
So, you get careless.
Killer releases his son after SWAT standoff, kills himself
The scene at sunrise this morning – Soto’s SUV at the right
Update 5:10 a.m.: César Meléndez, the 5-year-old boy abducted by his father Tuesday after a shooting in southwest Santa Fe is safe and in the custody of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
His father, 39-year-old, José Meléndez-Trillo, was located shortly after midnight Wednesday morning and, after a short police pursuit in southwest Santa Fe, barricaded himself and the boy in a 1997 Ford Expedition off County Road 56 west of the Santa Fe Municipal Airport.
After about a four-hour standoff with police, Meléndez-Trillo released the boy and immediately turned a gun on himself around 4 a.m., according to Sheriff’s Office Lt. Adan Mendoza. Police fired no shots and Mendoza credited all local law-enforcement for their assistance with the case.
Update 12:54 a.m.: Lt. Adan Mendoza of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that the suspect in Tuesday’s fatal shooting, José Meléndez-Trillo, has been found off County Road 56 west of the Santa Fe Municipal Airport, and officers are negotiating the release of his 5-year-old-son. Mendoza said the man and his son are in a vehicle, but could not elaborate.
The road toward La Cienega was blocked off at Huey Road, one mile west of N.M. 599. By 1 a.m. members of the Santa Fe Police Department’s SWAT team were beginning to assemble near the scene. One officer said Meléndez-Trillo was still armed and officers were in the process of moving the road block east to N.M. 599.
RTFA. This is why we didn’t get any sleep, last night. It all happened just beyond the bosque behind our home.
We were woken by the sirens of the cars chasing Soto down county road 56 just a tad before midnight. By the time I’d run out into the courtyard they were stopped – you could hear him shouting “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Yo soy an Americano.”
I went back into the house to get shoes on – and as I came back out the scene moved to the petroglyphs parking area a couple hundreds further south – on the west side of the road.
The coppers were superb, professional – especially whoever was in charge of trying to talk Soto out of his Ford Expedition over a loudspeaker. In very good Spanish with an Anglo accent.
He kept ask “Señor Soto” to release his niño – tried to get him to call a phone number which I presume was the officer’s cellphone so they might negotiate. I have no idea if that ever worked.
Around 4AM we heard the shot which must have been Soto killing himself – after releasing his little boy.
Umbrella, not gun, brought mall evacuation, SWAT teams
Police responded in force today to a report of a man with a rifle at a mall, evacuating shoppers and calling in a SWAT team as worried workers locked themselves into stores. But it turned out that the man was only carrying an umbrella.
Police said the umbrella, which had a samurai sword-style handle, did look like a rifle, and they didn’t fault those at the Burlington Mall who had reported the man…
“I’d do it all over again if this happened tomorrow,” said Burlington Police Chief Michael Kent, who said about 40 officers responded to the scene from his department, surrounding departments, the State Police and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement…
Police raced to the mall, blocking off the parking lot as four helicopters hovered in the sky. The North East Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council SWAT team, composed of officers from area communities, was summoned.
Tigges said that once police were inside the building, they were alerted that there was surveillance video of the suspect leaving the Sears store at the mall. Police showed the video to two people who had spotted the man at the Nordstrom store. They confirmed it was the same person, and police were able to determine the object the man was carrying was an umbrella and not a rifle…
State Police also said in a statement that a man had called them to report that he was the person seen in the mall. Troopers and officers went to the area of the nearby Lahey Clinic hospital, where the man worked, and interviewed him, determining he was not a threat…
Chief Kent praised the man, whom he would not identify, saying he had helped to bring the crisis to quicker end by contacting police. “We appreciate that he put an end to it a lot sooner,” he said. The man still has his umbrella.
Yes, this is the mall where they filmed the movie “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”
Taco Rage in Texas
SAN ANTONIO, TX — A Taco Bell drive-through customer who became enraged because of a price increase on Beefy Crunch Burritos fired a BB gun through the window at a manager on Sunday, police said.
No one was hurt from the shots fired by the man, who also waved a pistol and an assault rifle in the parking lot, Police Sergeant Chris Benavides said.
As the restaurant’s employees and customers hit the floor, the manager called police, and when officers arrived, the angry patron fired several shots at the police cars, Benavides said.
The man then barricaded himself inside a nearby motel room, sparking a standoff that lasted until police lobbed tear gas inside and the man surrendered.
Benavides said the burritos had been sold for 99 cents each as a promotion, but the man was apparently angry that the promotion had ended, and the price had gone up to $1.49.
Like, if you get this much of a reaction over the end of a special on burritos, how about something truly important like – say – the Dallas Cowboys moving to Los Angeles?
Sit on cellphone + phone calls wife = SWAT raid on school!
A 30-man armed SWAT team stormed a school in Illinois after a staff member accidentally called his wife from his pocket, causing her to believe that he was being held hostage.
Officers in America wearing riot gear and carrying automatic weapons searched Carlton Washburne School, Winnetka, for almost three hours after the woman, who has not been identified, called 911.
Joseph De Lopez, the local police chief, said the woman reported receiving a call from her husband in which she could hear muffled voices and believed he was being held captive by a man with a gun.
Within minutes a security perimeter was established around the school, whose pupils had left for the day, and officers poured into the building. Three TV news helicopters were circling above.
But while they were still searching the school, and the man’s distressed wife remained connected to his mobile phone and to 911, he returned home.
While driving back from work, he had called his wife by sitting on his mobile phone, which was in his back pocket, while he listened to hip-hop and talked to himself.
“His wife was the last number he’d dialled,” Chief De Lopez said.
Mark Friedman, the school district interim co-superintendent, explained that the music’s “gangster-like” lyrics had contributed to the woman’s concerns.
This passes for “good, clean fun” in the United States of America.
Outsourcing the war to local militias in Pakistan
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
DERA ISMAIL KHAN: They wear their hair and beards long, Taliban style, and support attacks on US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Yet the fighters are tolerated and – many believe – backed by Pakistan because they share a common enemy: the country’s most deadly terror network.
Pro-government militias like this one on the border of the country’s lawless tribal regions are an important plank in the campaign against the Pakistani Taliban following the slaying of its chief, Baitullah Mehsud, in a CIA missile strike last month.
They know the enemy and the terrain, need no motivation and their willingness to fight means fewer army casualties. And with the Pakistani Taliban ranks said to be in disarray following the death of their leader, some of their fighters could be persuaded to change sides and join them.
But critics say Pakistan risks creating a monster by linking up with them and other militias. While tribal feuding ensures they are enemies of Baitullah’s men for now, they are cut from the same militant cloth he was. Any alliance with the state could be temporary, and one day authorities could find themselves fighting their former proxies.
The United States, which gives millions of dollars in civilian and military aid to Pakistan each year, will be particularly concerned with the militia in Dera Ismail Khan because it still espouses militancy. The group’s logo proclaims the need for war in the name of God. The confusion is apparently reflected in the name that some in the town have given the group: ‘the government Taliban.’…
In harnessing tribes to fight one another, Pakistan is following the tradition of the region’s past British colonial rulers, who bought the loyalties of the tribes in an attempt to pacify the northwest. The armies have drawn comparisons with government-backed militias in Iraq that have been credited with helping beat back the insurgency there.
This already appears to be part of General McChrystal’s proposals for a revised strategy in Afghanistan. The pilot program was the so-called Surge in Iraq.
New? Cripes, it goes back to the Comancheros in the colonial period in the American Southwest. The risk was demonstrated then – as were the potential benefits. It certainly worked. To a certain extent, that’s how the US acquired New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, the broader Southwestern territories.
If the model is successful enough in Pakistan and Afghanistan, expect to see it translated into other lawless territories around the world.
President Obama deals with very small Republican critic!
Pakistan ‘nearing Swat victory’
Army troops on patrol in Mingora
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Pakistan’s operation against Taliban rebels in the Swat valley region should be over in the next few days, the country’s defence secretary has said.
Syed Athar Ali told a meeting of Asian nations in Singapore that only “5% to 10% of the job” remains. But an army spokesman said it was not possible to predict when the military operation would be completed…
The army has said it will pursue “hardcore” rebels after recapturing Mingora, the main city in Swat. Mingora was home to 300,000 people before the fighting began…
“The main cities in the Swat valley stand clear today. The operation is being conducted in the countryside to the right and left of the valley and to the North… so the operation is ongoing and it will take a little more time,” army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told the BBC.
But while Maj Gen Abbas said the remaining militants were being hunted down, he could not confirm when the army’s operation in the area would be complete.
“It’s difficult to give a timeline because this is an elusive enemy that has strongholds in the countryside,” he said…
Soldiers continued to patrol Mingora’s largely deserted streets on Saturday, securing neighbourhoods and checking houses for booby-traps.
Pakistan has increased its reward for the capture of the Taliban leader in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, to $600,000. The radical cleric is believed to be the architect of a two-year uprising in the valley aimed at enforcing Islamic law.
News coverage makes it seem easy; but, now the hard part begins. All the qualities of life a government should provide to its citizens – some of which was offered by the Taliban in the absence of government responsibility – must now flow into the region.
Every penny promised by external exchequers must be delivered in a timely fashion. Otherwise, this will be even less than a hollow victory.
From the Front Lines in the Swat Valley…
‘They used to attack early in the morning or after dark. They would always go for an ambush,’ said Lieutenant Zaigham, wounded in battle with the Taliban and lying in a hospital.
Zaigham – who did not give his full name – sustained shrapnel wounds from fierce street fighting in the Swat valley and is a patient at the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, away from the combat in the northwest.
Lying in bed with bandaged wounds, he and fellow soldiers spoke of intense battles against heavily-armed insurgents, who put up stiff resistance and are often able to outflank Pakistan’s well-equipped and motivated soldiers…
From May 4 to May 17, when Zaigham was wounded, his unit advanced slowly from Khwazakhela in northern Swat to the nearby town of Matta, which has long been under Taliban control.
‘There were strong resistance during the entire journey but we managed to clear the area. They buried mines and planted IEDs (improvised explosive devices) every 50 metres,’ he said…
‘They positioned snipers in holes made out of the walls of houses. They used civilians as human shields. They used to attack from houses and roofs.’
‘They are well equipped, they have mortars. They have rockets, sniper rifles and every type of sophisticated weapons,’ said Zaigham.
‘I am certain that foreign elements are behind these militants. Can I ask something very simple – who are their sponsors? What their sources of funding? Who runs their logistics?’ he said.
Only a few of the questions raised by this report from the front lines.
A useful and informative report. Classic journalism helping the people of a nation and citizens of the whole world to understand the course of Pakistan’s battle against insurgent Islamist brutality.
Clinton announces $110 million humanitarian aid for Pakistan
A Sikh girl has temporary housing in Sikh Temple at Hasanabdal
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
The Obama administration has been urging the Pakistani government to go after the Taliban in the Swat Valley, after a cease-fire seemed to embolden the Islamic militants, who came within 60 miles of the capital last month.
Now that the military response has displaced tens of thousands of residents, the Obama team is offering humanitarian aid to deal with the fallout.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the aid — $110 million — at the White House this morning. The White House said $100 million would come from the State Department and $10 million from the Defense Department. The largest single item is $26 million for the immediate purchase of wheat and other food…
The Obama administration’s new strategy in the region includes giving $1.5 billion a year in additional aid to Pakistan’s government to help it take on the militants and sending at least 17,000 more US combat troops to southern Afghanistan and 4,000 troops to train the Afghan military and hundreds of civilian advisers to help the Afghan government.
RTFA – Hillary’s remarks are carried in full. I am pleased to see this end of the strategy begin to function as well as the military component.
