Crazy American-style Siege Unfolding

While this is a big deal down under this is known here in the States as a "typical weekday." Cops are armed to the teeth for a reason here in the US.
 
The solution is obvious.
 

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BTMO said:
NZ houses are made out of wood. A random shot would *easily* pass through a house and kill someone - should he start shooting again.
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You mean wood-textured cardboard, surely.

Your point stands, though.
 
PogoPedant said:
You mean wood-textured cardboard, surely.

Your point stands, though.
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Mine is made of timber. It is just over 100 years old. They didn't do cardboard when mine was built...
 
gumboot said:
The whole thing is frankly, a little surreal. New Zealand just doesn't have incidents like this.
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Haven't you seen Lord of the Rings? That was pretty freaky.

Seriously, this is the sort of thing our news teams in Austin, Texas, would love to see. At least, that's the impression I get. Whenever the SWAT teams get called out, they send news crews over there to cover it, breathlessly reporting "We have a SWAT situation, here!"

Unfortunately, our sleepy little town is so boring that the "SWAT situation" usually boils down to something like, "A door-to-door salesman became belligerant when a resident told him his Deluxe Spot Remover was a pile of crap, and has now barricaded himself in his 1978 Pinto". The SWAT team is sent out just in case he has a gun, which he never does.
 
BTMO said:
Mine is made of timber. It is just over 100 years old. They didn't do cardboard when mine was built...
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Yeah, I don't know how the cavemen back in those days survived with all that backward technology.

"Timber", you say?
 
aggle-rithm said:
Haven't you seen Lord of the Rings? That was pretty freaky.

Seriously, this is the sort of thing our news teams in Austin, Texas, would love to see. At least, that's the impression I get. Whenever the SWAT teams get called out, they send news crews over there to cover it, breathlessly reporting "We have a SWAT situation, here!"

Unfortunately, our sleepy little town is so boring that the "SWAT situation" usually boils down to something like, "A door-to-door salesman became belligerant when a resident told him his Deluxe Spot Remover was a pile of crap, and has now barricaded himself in his 1978 Pinto". The SWAT team is sent out just in case he has a gun, which he never does.
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Well, it's Austin, so what did you expect? City full of liberals who get the vapours whenever they hear that someone owns a firearm. I swear, Austin in the middle of Texas must feel like the gay brother at the Fred Phelps family picnic.
 
BPSCG said:
Well, it's Austin, so what did you expect? City full of liberals who get the vapours whenever they hear that someone owns a firearm. I swear, Austin in the middle of Texas must feel like the gay brother at the Fred Phelps family picnic.
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Two weeks ago I sat next to a gay interracial couple at a Lisa Lampanelli concert.

Yeah, it's kind of like that.
 
BTMO said:
Yes, I know. They are doing a lot of stuff.

However, the guy they have holed up effectively has several hostages - the people trapped in the houses nearby. One of the neighbours was quoted in the papers this evening - apparently, he is randomly *shooting* into the houses nearby.
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According to the police everyone in houses within line of sight from the suspect's house has been evacuated.


BTMO said:
And no - the NZ public don't want police patrolling with guns - yet I notice that a lot of them seem pretty happy to have cops in their street with Bushmasters and Glocks when they need them - and they need them now.
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Which is the point of the AOS and STG - it gives police the heavily armed option whilst maintaining a primarily unarmed police force.


BTMO said:
The STG is in Napier - this is the team that shot and killed David Gray at Aramoana some years ago - sometimes, the only way to defend the public IS to shoot someone.
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Yes, but there's no evidence anyone in the public is currently at risk in this particular situation. Very different to Aramoana where David Gray's location was unknown.


BTMO said:
NZ houses are made out of wood. A random shot would *easily* pass through a house and kill someone - should he start shooting again.
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New Zealand houses are made of wood? What sort of remark is that? NZ houses are made out of all sorts of material. And as mentioned, according to police everyone within the immediate "danger zone" has been evacuated.


BTMO said:
The army have gone in today with their LAV - to pick up a sick resident in the street. Suppose they don't get to the next one in time?
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The reality is if a resident become so abruptly sick that a LAV a few hundred meters away couldn't have saved them, they weren't going to survive normally anyway.


BTMO said:
How bombproof are LAVs?
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Depends on the bomb. The problem with using the LAVs in an actual assault is that the LAV itself isn't practically capable of apprehending or taking down the suspect, which means people have to go in the house. If you use the LAV to create an entry point you now have a LAV blocking your entry point, and if you do a smash-and-retreat job you've immediately announced to the offender where you're coming in. A multi-point dynamic entry via windows or doors would have more chance of success.

In addition there's the very real risk of the LAV causing structural damage which would endanger anyone going inside (don't forget this is a two storey house).

Overall, I wouldn't think using a LAV for any sort of assault would be sensible, except as armoured cover for the assault team.

I must stress, however, that I know absolutely nothing about police assault tactics; this is all speculation.
 
gumboot said:
Unfortunately a single MQ-1 Predator drone costs more than the NZ Defense Force's entire annual budget. :boxedin:

(Not really...)
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Okay, how about getting some hobbyist who likes flying remote-controlled model planes, a couple of sticks of dynamite...

Al Qaeda can't be the only people in the entire world who know how to make IEDs.
 
Why not get the Philadelphia police to drop a bomb on the place? :boxedin:
 
gumboot said:
It's worth point out that it's not the Police's job to kill people. Any armed stand off that ends with the offender being killed is not a success. Their job is to secure suspects alive so that they can be put to trial in a court.
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I think I want to expound on that: While I have zero aversion to the use of force to maintain peace and apprehend a criminal, there's a bigger goal here that's Gumboot stated, and that's to bring the guy out alive and put him through the court system.

Here in the US, I think I heard once an interview where it was stated that the goal of a police negotiation was to bore the criminal into surrender. Again, this is less an aversion to use of force and more a pragmatic approach to ending a standoff. So as long as the criminal is contained - that, of course, is the paramount presumption - then it costs nothing but man-hours to conduct a standoff.

Of course, the moment it becomes obvious that the criminal is not contained, and can cause harm - say, he has a hostage and obviously will execute said hostage - at that point, force must be used. The greater goal suddenly changes to one of prevention of harm to innocents. But until that point, if the criminal is contained, and only continues to present a threat to the police, then negotiate until the guy dozes off, or just gets tired of it all, then come and get him with minimal effort. At any rate, if it's necessary to resort to the LAV to go get this guy, as long as the reasoning given after the fact is verifiable and sound, I don't have a problem with it at all, but if there's no need, why risk the lives of the police officers, and why run the risk of the criminal killing himself or getting killed? A standoff may seem like the criminal is winning because the police do not have the appearance of imposing their will on the criminal, but the reality is that the criminal is incredibly constrained, and that the police are the ones controlling his ability to affect the community at large. It actually favors the police, not the criminal, to be in such a situation. Let them keep things favorable to them, I say.
 
gumboot said:
So the second day of an increasingly massive police siege is unfolding today in the small city of Napier in the Hawkes Bay region of New Zealand.

Go to any NZ news source and you're bound to find dozens of articles on it.

The New Zealand Herald

Television New Zealand

The Dominion Post

Well you get the idea...

Near as I can tell, it all began with some police conducting a routine drug bust at a property. The owner came home, got himself into a rage, retrieved a firearm, and shot three police officers and a neighbour. One of the officers is dead - his body lying in the front of the house because every time police try to retrieve it they get shot at. The other two officers and the civilian are in a critical condition in hospital.

Apparently the neighbour was shot whilst trying to disarm the gunman and prevent him shooting the police. Brave person.

A fifth victim - a police dog, is believed to be lying dead in the back of a police vehicle.

Since then, the entire area has been sealed off any every imaginable asset has been put into play. The media are reporting several Armed Offender Squads (the equivalent of a SWAT team) and even the deployment of the Police's Special Tactics Group which is a sort of counter-terrorist unit that is rather secretive.

The gunman in question is a former Territorial Army officer (kinda like the National Guard) who allegedly styles himself on "rambo" and has a plethora of firearms and explosives, including homemade machine guns.

To emphasise the seriousness of the whole thing, the news has reported an army bomb squad and several army Light Armoured Vehicles are also on the scene. The NZLAV is sort of a high-tech mix between the US Army Stryker and the USMC LAV25.

The whole thing is frankly, a little surreal. New Zealand just doesn't have incidents like this. Some of you may recall a thread I created about an undercover police officer who was killed here recently after being caught planting a tracking device on a car. You may recall I commented about how rare it is for police officers to be killed here - in our entire history only 29 officers have been killed in the line of duty.

What's truly disturbing is that three of those 29 have been killed in less than a year. I hope the other two officers survive.

So there's an interesting question, and I have no doubt police on the scene are answering it themselves... "What do you do?"

This siege, by all accounts could last days. There's fears the house could be booby-trapped. The guy clearly has no intention of surrendering, and has been taking regular shots at police with multiple calibers of firearm.

I certainly wouldn't want to be on the team that had to go into that place.
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The safe thing is to bomb it - that will take care of any booby traps and end the shooting.. Obviously you first remove all civilians from the area and bring firefighting equipment in close enough to put out any spread of fire quickly (but not close enough for him to spot). I also assume house is fully cordoned off.
 
applecorped said:
Pfffft......my neighbor's doing the same thing as we speak.



Gotta go!!!
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I don't know if you were joking or not, but a few months ago a neighbor down the street from where I live did almost exactly that-- took a few shots at police and then holed up in his house. The stand-off was about 12 hours long, with the SWAT using a concussion bomb on his door and going in after tear-gassing the place to flush him out.

The weirdest part? The guy isn't in prison for taking a shot at the police, he still lives there, and now he has his door propped up in his front yard with some kind of "the police SUCK" message scrawled on it. Mind you, this is an otherwise middle-working-class quiet neighborhood.

Gotta love Texas. ;)

ETA - BPSCG: I remember when that went down. I was still living in NJ close to Philly at the time. After that incident I have no idea how Goode managed to stay in office until end of term. A lot of people were highly pissed off.
 
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