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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Security experts angry about performance of Phillipine police |
| 2010-08-24 |
| Security experts Tuesday were baffled and angered by the Philippines' handling of a hostage crisis in which a lone gunman was able to monitor ill-coordinated police operations live on television. "The fact that there was essentially live video was mistake number one," said assistant professor John Harrison, a homeland security analyst at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He told AFP there should have been a media blackout to deny the hijacker feedback on what was going on around him. No way, "freedom of the press" is more important, even when people get killed. Journalists say so and they're the ones who get to have opinions. Instead, he was able to follow events -- including frenzied speculation by serving and former police chiefs appearing on Philippine networks -- via the bus's internal TV. A retired Philippine military official who wrote a counter-terrorism manual and now runs a security consultancy said the police had enough expertise and equipment to deal with such an incident, but they were not put to use. "Those budget-stealing bastards on the SWAT team aren't getting the glory from this one!" The retired official believed many of the policemen on the scene, some of them seen crouching without any body armour behind patrol cars, did not appear to be fully trained Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) personnel. "They just put helmets on certain people," he remarked. |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #1 Speculation from fools. The SWAT team was their real team, umbrellas and all. They are trained in all the tactics and mission profiles to include a hostage situation on a bus. It was the SWAT sniper team that took the guy down. The mistake we are making here is asking people like some guy in Sigapore and a retired official, no credability. We also take leadership and decision making for granted. They did not have command and control of the situation, they did not have leadership to force them to stick to their training. So they screwed up over and over. How many times did they lose the sledge hammer into the bus? Six times! He was not wearing his proper gloves as SOP stated he should. The agruements to shoot or not is another one of issue. It is a decision the commander on the ground should make based on a number of criteria, First being the safety of the hostages and last being the welfare of the hostage taker. Media blackouts are not only impossible but not required. Allowing him to see his situation will certainly add perspective of futility. If done right a plus for the police. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2010-08-24 12:25 |