Seems a gun/drug running joint task force took down this piece of trash, and four officers were unfortunately wounded in the firefight. The piece of trash is in custody, two officers were hit in the vest, one in the foot, and one in the head. All are expected to survive.
Good story about the commitment of law enforcement organizations to work together, and the ATF doing its job well.
But please excuse me some nitpicking of the AP's selection of wording.
A gunman opened fire early Thursday on a SWAT team that burst into a home during a drug and gun raid, wounding four officers while spraying bullets from atop a staircase, authorities said.
[snip] The .357 Magnum used to shoot the officers...
Most .357 Magnums are revolvers, and hold 6 shots per cylinder. There is the possibility it was one of the newer "tactical" revolvers that hold 8 shots, or even a Desert Eagle (not impossible for a gun runner) holding 9 shots.
So bad guy shoots between 6 and 9 shots, and AP says he's "spraying bullets."
At 2:25 a.m., the task force consisting of officers from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, New Jersey State Police, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office and Lakewood police executed a "no-knock" search warrant at the single family split-level home.
So this task force ain't nothing to spit at. This isn't the one episode of Andy Griffith when you see them unlock the shotguns. This is basically federal SWAT. They're armed with fully automatic MP5s, or fully automatic M4s. Military weapons. But...
Police returned fire and shot Gonzalez several times. It was not immediately clear how many shots were fired.
I'm just going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to guess... ALL OF THEM.
The SWAT team from hell breaks down a door and begins ascending a tight staircase, a man appears at the top of the stairs, shoots multiple times, and two officers are noticeably hit. That motherfucker is going to get everything they've got.
The suspect, Jamie Gonzalez, 39, was in critical condition after suffering numerous gunshot wounds as police returned fire, Ford said.
AP calls the 6-9 shots a spray of bullets, and the cacophony of gun fire that must have erupted in that tiny stairway is "not immediately clear."
Yeah, I get that they're trying to sensationalize the story by starting it with "4 SWAT officers shot" instead of "2 SWAT officers wounded," and calling the unloading what was likely a 6-shot revolver "spraying bullets," but this is just another reminder of AP's colorful wording when they should simply be reporting.
Meh. It's not really a big deal, this one just bugged me.
1 comment:
I doubt he had a chance to unload that .357 unless he's ungodly fast (Jerry Miculek fast) or those cops are really, really slow (tree sloth slow). The fact that he managed four hits tells me that these officers might need some better training...
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