Not sure if this is GQ down the line (obviously “the answer” may vary), but in the case of the LV slaughter, the shooter apparently was set up to fire directly through his door entering the corridor.
SWAT approach laterally only. What are their options (short of a robot)?
Slide on the wall and place an explosive on the frame? And if the fire from inside can penetrate those walls?
I’m interested (and amazed) by the lateral approach to the field of fire.
There are large portable “bunkers”, essentially walls on wheels, that can absorb rifle fire. I’d assume that LV Metro has one but who knows? If so, maybe its too large to get into an elevator. Here’s one at the bottom of the llnked page. The ones I’ve seen are much larger.
Short of a robot? I’d say body armor and a specially modified shotgun which is designed for breaching doors. You put the muzzle next to the door latch (not the handle) and it fires shot into the strike on the door frame, damaging both the frame and the latch. Run up to the door, blow the lock, then get out of the way, total about two seconds during which you hope that your body armor will protect you if the shooter fires through the door. After the lock is blown, toss in a flashbang and then send in two more people (also wearing body armor) to take out the shooter. IANALEO
And tray shooter does not have steel cored AP ammo, or ammo modified with carbide penetrators loaded in the gun facing the breach, or body armor gets ventilated.
Fascinating site. Thank you.
Learning about specific breaching tools (I never knew, eg, that a “breaching shotgun” was a thing, as sbunny notes). I also found interesting, because of the circumstances of Las Vegas and the “was it an auto” usual nonsense in the press, the company’s services and requirements for conversion of weapons to full auto.
I saw a demo years ago of British SAS troops entering an apartment holding several bad guys and hostages. They used some sort of wall-penetrating scan (possibly infrared) to identify the locations of everyone before entering, then used a really cool device about the size of half a normal door that attaches to a flat surface and uses explosive charges from top to bottom sequentially. It literally rolled down the wall like a sardine tin and made a nice hole for soldiers to enter.
Presumably you would use something ranged to knock/pound on the front door, while actually penetrating a wall flanking the bad guy a moment later. Cut the power/lights to the building at that moment.
Lead with flashbang grenades, and use night-vision gear to spot the bad guy, who is (you hope) looking and shooting in the wrong direction.
In the demo, the SAS guys “neutralized” all the bad guys in under three seconds.
The SWAT team you can dig up in 9 minutes in Vegas can’t be that good. With the SAS, you’ve got a group of men in the prime of their lives who do nothing but train for years. SWAT team members are funded by the city and can’t possibly have as much or as high a quality of training. And those SAS members woke up that morning knowing they were going to do a demo, they’ve been in that practice shoot-house many times, and all their gear and team roles would be well rehearsed.
I actually wonder how they even got a SWAT team to the location that quick. Did Vegas SWAT have a van full of soldiers in full gear ready to go? It takes more than 9 minutes just to get into that outfit and pull weapons.
Not that it mattered. What it sounds like happened is that the Vegas shooter saw on his hidden cameras the SWAT team getting ready in the hall, with their imposing ballistic shields and black armor. He choose to kill himself instead of fighting.
Maybe we’ll hear in the news, but it’s quite possibly one of the shooter’s guns could have shot right through the SWAT protective armor and gear. Did they have level IV vests on? Was the ballistic shield rated level IV? I suspect their body armor was interceptor vests, but they only protect the torso. And their shields were probably only rated for pistol fire.
The key there is that it was military personnel doing the work. There are many very vocal people who object to the “militarization” of the police. Thing is, a barricaded sniper with (for all intents and purposes) automatic weapons killing scores of people warrants a military type response. I for one would have no objection if the police used a shoulder-launched rocket of some sort or hand grenade to take the guy out. People objected to the use of an explosive to stop the killer in Houston because he wasn’t killing anyone at that moment. Well, he wasn’t surrendering either. Too bad. If the cops can’t have high powered weaponry available and the law (Posse Comitatus Act) prohibits the use of the military in law enforcement, what are we supposed to do? I’m not saying every patrol car should have a LAW or belt-fed machine gun but they need to have access to something for instances like this.
It was mentioned in one of the threads that it’s common to stage a SWAT team near large events like this.
Perhaps you should read up on Las Vegas Metro’s Zebra Force before commenting on how good they are.
I actually have seen comparions, and yeah, SWAT teams do surprisingly well, but it’s more that training has diminishing returns.
I read SamuelA’s comment as “not as good as trained SAS/SEAL teams” rather than “not good at all” when taken in context.
This isn’t LA? You made a comment about LV SWAT, I gave you a link about the LV SWAT.
They are trained for what the job calls for. They might not make good SEALs, but SEALs would need massive retraining to become effective LV SWAT team members.
The handjob trigger twitch. Weirdly declared a “machine gun,” due to constrained ATF language already in place. No doubt the language formulation will be similar for the ensuing career of the bump stock.
Where do you get 9 minutes from?
According to the New York Times, the timeline went like this:
10:08 - A police officer reports what sounds like automatic fire. There was also a report that it was coming from upstairs in the Mandalay Bay.
10:13 - One officer identifies the gunfire as coming from one floor above the officer’s position on the 31st floor of the Mandalay Bay.
10:20 - Most indications seem to be that the firing has stopped. There is apparently a single “later” report that the firing stopped at 10:25.
10:24 - Police outside the assailant’s door are still calling for a SWAT team.
10:28 - SWAT teams gather.
It would be 50 more minutes (11:20) before the SWAT team breaches the door and find their assailant already dead. So, one hour and 22 minutes from the start of firing until the SWAT team did anything that would have directly interfered with the assailant’s attack had the assailant not already been dead. Even gathering the SWAT,team took 22 minutes.
Then what took them so long to do anything? It seems to me that while the LV SWAT teams may be amazing at attacking people’s homes in the middle of the night with hours of preparation, in this case, they:
caused officers who were close by and perhaps able to respond to instead just call for the super hero police, and
spent 50 minutes after the shots stopped and their target was dead opening the hotel room door.
The shooter had a camera system to tell him where in the hallway “visitors” were. If the officers in the area had responded, do you think this guy would have thought about taking a few plain uniformed police with him first, instead of giving up? Two or three police approach the door without extensive weapons… He could have simply shot them through the walls with what he had. Didn’t he shoot the hotel security guy in the leg, through the door, first time someone came knocking?
Good info. As to the wall breaching device … .
Most ordinary-sized hotel rooms are laid out the same way: The door into the room opens onto a narrow hallway with a bathroom on one side and perhaps a shallow closet on the other. Then, 8-10 feet in beyond the bathroom the room widens out to the full width.
In rooms of that design there’s no good wall to breech. On one side of the door you blast your way into the bathroom, through the plumbing and sink/vanity/tub installation. Might be messy, wet, & slow the teams’ ingress. On the other side of the door you’ll be breeching into the edge of the wall between the two rooms.
There’s certainly nothing to prevent applying the breeching device to the door itself. Although that involves troops standing in a completely predictable place to do the work.
AIUI the LV shooter had rented a larger suite-type room. Which may well have had appropriate breechable wall space flanking the door.
“Breaching shotgun” is not a thing. It’s called a shotgun. You can do ballistic breaching with any shotgun. Having a stand off accessory attached to the end of the barrel is helpful but not necessary. That’s a spacer that allows you to place the barrel touching the door instead of holding it an inch or so away. The Army’s new M-26 shotgun has an attached spacer that slides back and forth but it’s still not a breaching shotgun.
Breaching rounds are a thing. They are 12 gauge shotgun rounds. The projectile itself looks like a half of a slug.
Ballistic breaching is not optimal by any stretch. For one thing you are blindly pumping rounds into a room. Not exactly a concern in this case but it is in most cases. Mostly it’s not a great idea because you have to stand in front of the door and pump 3 to 6 rounds into the door while being fully exposed. It also takes longer than other techniques which takes away from your surprise. It is also could be less than effective on steel doors.
Large urban areas have teams that are dedicated to emergency response. They are not regular cops who do it on the side. They are either training, on a mission or prestaged at large events. They might not be SAS but they have a much different job to do.
If there was no shooting there was no need to do anything in a hurry. The shooter was most likely dead and certainly trapped. It was possible that he was alive and waiting for a breach. Or the door was booby trapped. They had time to figure out the best way of entering without sacrificing any officers. If they reached the door and there was still shooting going on there would have been a different response.
Saw on CNN last night - hotel security had gone to the 32nd floor because there was a door alarm (not his) indicating a door had failed to close (a feature, I presume, of those fancy computer-connected key card locks.) The shooter saw the guy from his cart-cam and shot at him through the wall and door - 200 rounds! …and still only hit him in the leg, and the guy got away.
I saw in Egypt, the police have these things that are basically a metal shield or wall with wheels, about 5x3 feet with a tiny window (about 2x4 inches) of very thick bulletproof glass. (IIRC, in the movie Leon / The Professional, the Swat team in the big finale uses some of these to approach the hotel room too. ) I don’t know how effective high powered ammo is, but I do suspect almost an inch of hardened steel will stop pretty much anything hand-held.