Upstate Shooter Update

Not always Plan A.

Some preliminary and follow-up observations about the 4-3-09 shootings in Binghamton, NY.

Schools near the scene were put on lock-down but apartment buildings in the same area were evacuated.  WTF: apartment dwellers are somehow less intrinsically valuable than students?  It was the same scenario whether one was stuck in Algebra or watching Frazier re-runs: there was a guy with a gun in a building surrounded by cops.  To keep the kids in the building because they might wander over to the scene and be hurt is one thing.  But to assume no apartment residents would stroll over to see what was going on and also might be hurt  is absurd. 

Better that the cops have a radio/TV announcement telling people there was danger close and they needed to stay inside than to have cops go through buildings telling people to leave, which is what they did as far as reports inform us.  One patrol car could have gone through the area broadcasting a warning to stay inside with doors and windows locked until the area was declared clear of danger.  But, no.  Evidently cops were sent to evacuate people from surrounding residences.

This is inadvisable in a number of ways.

• If there are armed attackers, the best place for unarmed civilians who are not located in the same building as the attackers is probably behind locked doors.  If the shooters move toward the building you're in, it would be best to get out of Dodge before they get there.
• If there are armed attackers, the best thing for cops to be doing is moving aggressively against those attackers to minimize the death and destruction they might cause. 
• If there are armed attackers at one location, there is no reason to believe that is the only site at which an attack will be launched.  Rather than going through apartment buildings and neighborhoods telling people to leave their homes and flee for their lives, those cops should have been at least on stand-by; fully armed and equiped and on the way to other likely targets in the city.
• Mumbai had multiple attackers at multiple locations.  Given that attack, there is no reason to think any attack in any town of any size will be just one guy who's pissed off because he lost his job. 
• Any Chief of Police who trains and deploys his troops as though that's true needs to be fired.

Period.

I watched the coverage of the incident.  There were emergency lights flashing from all sorts of vehicles.  But if a building's not burning down at the moment, the firemen can direct traffic while cops deploy to potential secondary targets.  Like schools.  And malls. 

The most annoying thing about the coverage was, to me, the apparent obsession the news-reader had with the fact that the cops took two people out of the building in flex-cuffs, as opposed to steel hand-cuffs.  She mentioned more than once the training she'd "seen and received" from SWAT guys and how all that training didn't suggest to her why those two guys were taken out in flex-cuffs.  I guess she wasn't paying attention or was busy applying her own "enlightened" perspective to the training... so she missed that part.  She sounded like a fool. But that's what CNN is all about.

My guys and I used to carry at least two sets of steel cuffs on our gun-belts and three or four flex-cuffs between our pants belt and our gun-belt.  Why?  Because sometimes we needed all the restraints we could carry.

I'll write more on this later but I just want you to be brave.  A dozen or so people were killed today and some of them wouldn't have perished if they'd been brave. 

In Israel, civilians are taught to attack shooters like the one in NY today.  Attack the shooter.  Swarm him though you are unarmed... or risk being that sitting duck about which we all hear.

That's what I'd do if I was unarmed.  You decide what you're going to do when the time comes. And don't think it won't.

Now, some more information which I've gathered from public sources, the same ones you all have, and some observations and questions that spin naturally from them.

Chief of Police Joseph Zikuski said cops arrived on scene two minutes after the initial 911 call and he arrived on scene one minute after that, and that there were no shots fired after his arrival. 

Okay, someone needs to do something other than hold down the SUV.

The shooter fired 98 rounds in around a minute.  That means you have to know ahead of time what you're going to do, since this guy did and so will the guy(s) you're up against.  You have to have some idea how you're going to respond given the building a/o terrain you're in/on.  You need to know where exits are if that's what you'll be heading for and where the hallways lead in case you decide/plan to head courageously for the sound of the guns when you hear them. 

He used two semi-automatic pistols and carried a bag in which was lots of ammo.  He probably had several magazines fully loaded and ready to go in that bag ~ that's how he got so many shots off so quickly.  But he had to have practiced shooting and reloading in order to have done what he did so effectively.  So, are you going to practice?  Are you going to have a proper pistol and several loaded magazines ready to go when it comes time for you to respond to a shooter like this? If that's what you decide to do.  BTW, if you're maybe thinking of getting a pistol, you'd better get off the pot, buster.  I stopped at a large local sporting goods store this afternoon and saw their handgun racks were about 60%... empty.  People are stocking up on guns and ammo.

I'm just sayin'...

He wore SBA.  Soft Body Armor.  It's not called a bullet-proof vest because nothing is bullet-proof. This shows even more the depth of his preparation.  To you this means that, if you decide to respond to an active shooter and you decide to shoot him and he doesn't fall after you've put several adequate-sized bullets into his torso, you're going to have to shoot him in the head.  If that's what you decide.

"...took the SWAT team several hours to clear the place due to the information that kept kept coming in about possibly the shooter may still be in the building..."

SOP since Columbine has been for the first two or three cops on the scene of an "active shooter" to team up and go in the building to stop the shooter.  Waiting for SWAT to show up is not how things are done anymore.  Training for active shooter response has become a number one budget item for many if not most of the law enforcement agencies in this country and around the world.  There are no indications from anywhere that support the early report that there were hostages in the building.  Because I know, I can tell you there isn't a hostage situation until some bad guy puts a weapon to some good guy's head and says, Nobody moves or this guy gets it right in the melon. Until that time, there are too many unknowns and unknowables to have fully-armed cops waiting behind patrol cars. My guess is that the cops thought the silence meant the shooter was gathering people as hostages a/o barricading himself somewhere.  Okay.  If that's what they knew he was doing then letting him settle down is a wise thing to do ~ then try to talk him out without anyone (else) being hurt.   But they didn't know.  Because they were outside. For all they knew, there were bodies piling up inside as Voong and an accomplice or two shot people with silenced HK 45s and then chopped off their heads.  Silence can mean many things.  IMHO, as soon as he arrived at the American Civic Association building, the Chief should have gathered the cops who had gotten there just before him and, leading from the front, advanced into the building to locate, engage and destroy the threat.  Why didn't he?  I don't know. 

The Chief said that along with his guys, he had the assistance of the "full force" of the Broome County Sheriff's Department, and the NY State Police, and that they, along with the INS, ATF and the US Marshal's Service "were at my side, start to end."

My guess is that all those troops were not literally to his immediate left, right and rear ~ though the tactical leadership of those groups certainly should have been right there in his hip pocket.  But what I'd like to know for sure is: exactly where were all these extra troops deployed?

• Were all BPD officers at the scene? 
• Where were the 2d shift BPD officers? 
• Where was BPD 3rd Shift? 
• Where did BCSO deputies deploy and what was their task?
• Where were the Feds deployed and what were they tasked with?

These things are important to you now because we're seeing more and more of these incidents and the next one could involve you or someone you love.  So, to the extent possible, you need to prepare.  One of the things you need to do to prepare is to have some sort of idea what your local PD plans to do in a situation like this.  Will they let you in on their secrets if you ask them to share? No.  And they shouldn't.  But they should have this sort of general plan:

• An active  shooter at any location will be responded to with an appropriate level of force, both in terms of the numbers of police officers, and the weapons and tactics used to control and defeat the threat.
• But, at the same time this is happening, an adequate number of officers with appropriate weapons and tactical know-how will deploy to the area of other high-value targets in town and be prepared to respond in force should the initial incident be a ruse, designed to draw critical resources to a minor incident and away from what is intended to be the main attack location. 

Plainly said: Don't send all your guys to a house where one guy is shooting at his neighbors with a .22 when he could be doing it merely to draw all the cops to his area while his bigger, badder buddies attack the middle school on the other side of town.

I'm not the only one with serious questions about this debacle, as you can read here.

You need to know if your Chief of Police or Sheriff has this sort of contingency plan.  Why?  Because if they don't and you work or spend significant time at one of those attractive targets, or love someone who does, then you'd like to be able to do something other than weep and scream in fear a/o sorrow as your world a/o theirs is changed forever. Too, it may not be a bad idea for cop leadership to let bag-guys know that running a diversion on one side of town while they terrorize the other just ain 't gonna work.

Part of being prepared is to try reasonably to be sure others are prepared, too.  Especially those who are paid and sworn to protect you. Pray for 'em.  But hold 'em accountable.

Comments

[Undaunted]

RM, I haven't been to a Krav Maga class, and viz disarming techniques, I was trained in Secret Service methodology. But, with what I've seen of KM, my guess is there is something helpful in that discipline for a middle-age woman. If there's nothing here

http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/179_krav-maga-techniques.htm

that answers your question, check with a local KM instructor. I'm sure you'll find an answer, and probably a tactic, there.

[Undaunted]

What I wrote earlier pertains to that specific situation: armed attackers approaching a school in which there are children at the time.

Children being kept indoors at a school several blocks from an isolated shooter in order to keep them from wandering over to the scene to see what's going on is probably a pretty good idea most of the time.

And, I agree: there's no sense in a lock-down if there are no defenders, or if the students/teachers just intend to cower in the corner hoping they don't get killed.

[j in brooklhyn]

Uh, how does this square with your "lockdown
no No NO" advice earlier?

Also, what use is a lockdown in a school if
there's no defenders? (Assuming that there's
a reason for the lockdown at all)

[RM]

OK - we are getting trained. Thanks for posting the offer, by the way.

Now, what kind of training should we get if we are unarmed? Looking at Krav Maga - is that a decent training for a middle aged woman to get if she wants to be able to disarm someone while she is unarmed?