SWAT team watches sexual assault on hostages!!

[niyad]

will somebody PLEASE explain to me WHY the SWAT team WATCHED the assault on these girls and didn't do anything?? am I missing something here, is there some regulation that allows SWAT teams to behave as voyeurs?

. . . . . .
Morrison, who had been living out of his car but had a Denver address, had a semi-automatic pistol and a revolver.

“He did traumatize and assault our children,” Wegener said, describing the assaults as “sexual in nature.” It’s unclear how many of the girls were assaulted during the four-hour ordeal.

SWAT team members witnessed some assaults on the female students and relayed the information to Wegener. Hostages who were released confirmed he had assaulted them, Wegener said.

Morrison talked with negotiatiors in the beginning, then only talked through the girls. Eventually, Morison broke off communications and said “something would happen at 4 p.m.,” Wegener said.

Wegener said his decision to move in on Morrison was prompted by that vague deadline threat and the SWAT team’s observations of what Morrison was doing to his hostages.
. . . . . .

http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1322054

[helderheid]

1. I am speechless

[shadowknows69]

2. Isn't that when the SWAT snipers

should be putting a bullet in the back of his head?

[LostinVA]

26. YES

[cynatnite]

3. Didn't the guy have a bomb, too?

Did they have a clear shot without the possibibility of hitting the girls?

[niyad]

5. according to the reports, he had two guns--no indication of a bomb

[onenote]

6. he claimed to have a bomb

he didn't, but that wasn't known until after the SWAT team went in.

[niyad]

8. thanks for the info--that isn't in any of the reports I have been

reading since I first heard about this.

[meegbear]

7. from cnn.com

When police arrived, the gunman told them he had a bomb in his backpack, Wegener said, but after it was over, he said, "It looks like there was nothing in the backpack."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/28/school.shooting/index.html

[Xithras]

23. Other sites have claimed that there were sex toys in the backpack.

It appears that he entered the school with the intention of sexually assaulting one or more girls.

[Schema Thing]

4. There is no indication whatsoever

That SWAT members had a clear shot at the man.

In fact, the very fact that they "stormed" instead of "sniped" to end the affair, indicates that they did not.

[Marr]

15. Agreed. And good point.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. What should they have done?

[angstlessk]

10. And I bet as they watched...they had to hold back the desire to KILL

the bastard...I believe SWAT is highly trained and very professional. They are the 'special forces' of the police force.

[blogslut]

11. I wasn't there

and neither were you.

This was a real, actual life and death situation - not some television program.

[niyad]

13. I am afraid I don't understand the tv reference. kindly explain.

no, I wasn't there, nor were you, but what the HELL does that have to do with television, which I don't watch anyway?

[blogslut]

18. The reference

alludes to your misguided belief that because you read a news account, you can re-write the drama.

[niyad]

20. and that refers to television how, exactly? last I checked, I couldn't

rewrite any televisions shows either.

[blogslut]

21. oh, stop pretending you're confused

I'm not sure what you're trying to say either. I would hate to think that you believe those officers somehow enjoyed watching those girls being terrorized and abused. I guess you think they should have stormed the school earlier or managed to successfully fire off a killshot - bringing the whole tragedy to its best possible conclusion. And I'm telling you that you're imagining fantasies - be they television scripts or novels or whatever made-up notion you have of the concept of four children trapped in a room with a dangerous man that is probably armed.

But if you want to dance around the word 'television' and how you don't watch it, and that somehow invalidates what I'm trying to say, well, I won't play.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. If it were a TV show...

The hero SWAT member, upon seeing the girl getting violated, would have torn off his shirt to reveal his six-pack, rushed through the front door, dodged the bullets from the gunman, wrenched the gun from his hands, broken the gunman's neck with his bare hands, rescued the girl, and then killed the gunman again because he wasn't really dead the first time. All without any hostages being killed.

You seem to suggest that the SWAT team should have done it like they do it in the movies.

[liberalmuse]

12. Imagine the position the SWAT Team members were in...

They could not do anything, because the guy supposedly had a bomb. If they acted to prevent the assaults, then a school full of kids could have died. I hope none of us even finds ourselves in such a position where we would have to choose between watching one atrocity happen in order to prevent a larger atrocity. Jesus.

[niyad]

14. as I understood yesterday, the other students had been removed

to another school. is that not correct?

[LostInAnomie]

16. Oh geez, let's jump to conclusion and blame the police for a situation...

... where the facts haven't completely come out yet.

The police and SWAT team did their best.

[spoony]

17. "Wegener said his decision to move in on Morrison was prompted

by that vague deadline threat and the SWAT team’s observations of what Morrison was doing to his hostages."

Sounds to me like they saw what was happening and it contributed to their decision to storm in. You know, their job.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

22. Surely you are not implying

they took pleasure from having to see this?

This are highly trained men and women who know when to go in and know when they can't. I admire them for keeping the priorities straight: the girls' lives. It must have been hell and it will haunt them forever. Here they were men and women whose job is to protect and they had the firepower but they just had to take it. They will never be the same.

[RamboLiberal]

24. I'm not faulting SWAT or the sheriff on this one

I'd bet they may be second-guessing themselves if they should've stormed the class room when they did since the SOB killed that poor girl.

I would expect their sniper(s) did not have a clear shot.

I loathe that this freak sexually assaulted the girls, but SWAT and the sheriff probably did the right thing by waiting.

Where I think SWAT and the police reacted incorrectly was the Columbine shooting where it took them several hours to go in to the school. The two killers were long dead by suicide. And their delay cost teacher Dave Saunders his life. And who knows if other victims may have been alive. SWAT leaders re-evaluated their tactics following Columbine and now in that scenario would probably storm the building.

Some of you watch too many TV shows and movies.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

Oh For Christ's Sake Are You For Real?

I think it's shameful that you would even begin to imply that the SWAT team had voyeuristic intentions. You have serious issues.

A hostage situation is a tricky situation. You can't just go in blazin at a moments notice. If you did, the hostages lives would be put immensely at risk. Hence the need for negotiators and patient planning. These SWAT guys did the best they could. How dare you imply such sick intentions on their part.

[ShaneGR]

25. Well, eventually they did go in, and a hostage was shot to death.....

And according to the article, the reason they went in was because they witnessed the sexual assaults. So what are you talking about?

[Swede]

27. Sheriff's son attends that school,he said he know's most of the parents

this is a small community,so there was agonising over what to do.

[madmusic]

28. It's a good idea to read 3 or 4 DIFFERENT accounts...

Before jumping to conclusions. How do you know the police could see what was going on? Maybe the released victims told them.

The gunman entered the Platte Canyon High School Wednesday before noon, taking six hostages but gradually giving up four of them. He threatened that he had a bomb in his backpack.

He broke off negotiations some time before the killing, saying, ' 'leave me alone, get out of here',' Wegener said.

Morrison had set a deadline of 4 pm, saying 'something was going to happen' at that time, Wegener said.

A half an hour before the deadline, police decided 'that a tactical solution needed to be done in an effort to save the two hostages that were in the room,' Wegener said.

'My decision was to either wait, possibility of having two dead hostages. Or act to try and save what I feared he would do to them,' Wegener said.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1206045.php/In_hostage_death_police_needed_to_protect_victims_Sheriff__Roundup_

Whatever the actual facts, they are ugly enough without speculation.

[niyad]

30. see this within the quoted article

SWAT team members witnessed some assaults on the female students and relayed the information to Wegener. Hostages who were released confirmed he had assaulted them, Wegener said.

[madmusic]

31. It also said they thought he had a bomb. n/t

[A-Schwarzenegger]

29. "allows SWAT teams to behave as voyeurs?"

What a miserably disgusting & ignorant post.

[benEzra]

32. Probably one of those little fiber-optic surveillance cameras that you can

slip under a door, OR the classroom had a surveillance camera. No, the SWAT team wasn't just sitting around watching this happen. They did the best they could, and unlike Columbine, they were on the ball. This whole thing is a tragedy all around, but I don't think you can blame the police; they did their best.

[Rocknrule]

33. I think my state is cursed

CO is now the school shooting capitol of America. Isn't one school shooting, especially the worst in the nation's history, enough? WTF is wrong with my fellow Coloradans? This saddens me greatly.

[aikoaiko]

34. Saying they behaved voyeuristically with so little known is asinine.

Do you have any evidence that they were obsessively observing or deriving sexual pleasure from observing the sexual assaults of those school girls?

voy·eur n.
1. A person who derives sexual gratification from observing the naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point.
2. An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.