Chicago Police are just not prepared for a serious shooting or any event involving criminals with heavier weapons. The politicians in Los Angeles were horrified to learn their officers had to borrow suitable firearms from local gun stores before they could cope with the decade old, and infamous North Hollywood Shootout.
Since every gun shop was run out of Chicago their patrol officers are truly on their own unless and until the department delivers weapons to the first responders. This is no different than requiring Chicago cops to call 911 and wait for the real police.
Even the gun hating, Left Wing Los Angeles politicians conceded street cops need reasonable access to rifles and shotguns and made that happen. Virtually every patrol car in California has and M-16 and a .12 gauge shotgun in a vehicle mount.
The City of Chicago is killing their own cops by not providing more that a one per year, 30 round in-service firearm qualification for their officers. It’s obvious that police officers don’t deserve to live as far as Chicago’s Mayor and City Council is concerned.
From a website devoted to the North Hollywood Shootout story:
“An event that took place in February 28th 1997. A series of bank robberies culminated in quite possibly the most violent shootout in modern American police history. The lives of 36 patrons and 12 employees were endangered when two heavily armed men wearing body armor decided to rob the Bank of America in North Hollywood. Seen entering the bank by Los Angeles police officers, the two men intimidated employees and patrons by firing shots inside while not realizing that Los Angeles police officers were surrounding the building. As they left the bank, the robbers became aware of their predicament and began shooting at police and civilians.
Three civilians and nine officers were shot within the first five minutes of the shootout, and a total of 350 officers were called to the scene. As police bullets bounced off the suspects, it became evident that the two men were wearing body armor and had out-gunned the police with their armor piercing bullets and semiautomatic weapons. A total of seven civilians and eleven LAPD officers were injured. Despite the overwhelming odds, many heroic officers, while in grave danger, initiated officer and citizen rescues as the suspects continued to exchange shots with other officers. The suspects fired more than 1,100 rounds from their semiautomatic assault rifles. Eventually, one suspect committed suicide and members of the LAPD SWAT team shot and killed the other.”
4 comments:
Pat , you know as well as I do.The Mayor will never let that happen on his watch . Sure , Chicago has a "SWAT" team but where is it at if you need it. A long way away and many minutes from being there. Even if Swat arrives they can't do anything until the "WAR" wagon gets on scene and by then we would have lost the fight already. Lets see if J-Fed does anything about the problem. I still think he is a puppet of Da Mayor.
The patrol officer will be the first on the scene.The patrol officer if properly trained and equiped,will have the best chance of handling the situation.
Swat has its place,but its not the answer.If you want to save lives the first on the scene are the ones to do it.
When I was in the old Task Force which became the SOG Special Operations Group, we had a heavy weapons wagon on every watch in our area (area 1 task force). We in the T/F had also been trained at a military base in the use of the heavy. We had automatic rifles, 30.6 sniper rifle, and shot gun training. We also had granade launcher guns. Chicago was way ahead of L.A. with that bank robber dudes - we would not have had to borrow guns from a shop as they did in L.A. So all in all, I;m not sure I agree with your column? The Old Coper.
What's really sad is when I asked the Mayor to hold a terrorism training exercise in the loop for our cpd.
I have the fax to prove it plus told SCC what I was doing before I sent it over. It's HORRIBLE here...
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