Police-action gunfight in Miami

[Snowman366]

Bad guy took multiple rounds to the torso/chest and kept on fighting. Officer initially hit in the gut keeps fighting and appears to drop him with a head shot from the side.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b30_1368154795

New home surveillance video of a shootout between Miami-Dade Police and a man at a suspected grow house has been released.

The video was shown by a prosecutor in court Thursday in the case against Luis Estevanell, who is facing drug possession, drug trafficking and felony murder.

The surveillance video was captured by a camera at the suspected grow house last summer. The video shows the owner of the alleged grow house, Gerard Delgado, get into his BMW vehicle just moments before detectives and an FBI agent arrive at the home to investigate the growing of marijuana.

Upon arrival, they come across, Estevanell. As they are talking to him, Delgado exits his vehicle and opens fire on the officers. The shootout ensues for a while. Officers can be seen taking cover and firing back.

Delgado was fatally shot in the head.

Miami-Dade Police Detective John Saavedra was shot three times in the stomach. He has not been able to return to the police force since.

Detectives found about 80 pounds of marijuana worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Officials said the reason Estevanell is being charged with felony murder, even though he didn't pull the trigger, is because in the State of Florida if you commit a crime that results in the death of somebody, they can also charge you with the felony murder.

Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b30_1368 ... 81Bk6sw.99

 

[OhioArcher]

That is a wild video. How did the LEO s not see the shooter get in his car? It was a matter of seconds. Took him a while to die even after that head shot.

 

[Snowman366]

That is a wild video. How did the LEO s not see the shooter get in his car? It was a matter of seconds.

Well...that's not easily answered, especially from where we're sitting right now. Things can go right in the toilet in just a matter of seconds, so it's hard to say. But there are some things to consider.

To start with, there are two types of arrest scenarios: "planned", and "un-planned".

"Planned" arrests are the ones where you've obtained a warrant, and you get a team of officers and go execute the warrant. Since you choose the day and time you'll serve the warrant, you naturally have the luxury of looking ahead at the location and the suspects you'll be dealing with and taking steps to exert as much control as humanly possible over the variables of situation before and during its occurrence. The FBI, DEA and other detectives, in general, deal almost exclusively with "planned arrests". It's an advantage, if you make use of it.

"Un-planned" arrests, as you might expect, occur with little or no warning and are more what uniformed patrol officers typically run into. They get called to quiet a loud stereo, and end up locking someone up for being a parole violator, for example, or make a minor traffic stop and spot the butt-end of an illegal sawed-off 20-gauge poking out from under the front seat. Un-planned arrests are a mess because of all the variables the officer(s) have to suddenly deal with. That's why we prefer the "planned arrest" scenario if we reasonably have an option.

As noted, in a planned arrest scenario, like this one, you first need a well-researched plan for controlling the scene and the people in it. There are training courses available for conducting planned arrests and you normally can't get into a detective assignment, especially in a bigger LE agency, without being schooled in one.

The second component to a controlled warrant service is to have the officers on the scene following the officer safety system called "Contact and Cover".

This involves formally assigning officers to one or the other of two assignments at the scene. "Contact" officers do all the talking, searching, handcuffing, inventorying, report-taking and public interaction at the scene. "Cover" officers are stationed at appropriate points on the scene, usually vantage points on the inner perimeter, where they devote themselves solely...and I mean solely...to providing physical control over the safety of everyone within the designated "work area" of the scene.

I always pounded on everyone about using Contact and Cover in every situation to give you control over the "work area" when you go in on a job. On "planned" arrests, like this, we need to exert as much control over the "work area" as we can.

Imagine if those detectives had simply brought along a couple of determined-looking "Cover" officers (preferably in uniform) both armed with, say, a short-barreled Mossberg gauge, to continuously watch over the work area, it's perimeter and it's focal point.

Those doing the "Contact" work can yell "Gun!", when confronted with one, and dive for the nearest tree or parked car...leaving the armed suspect all alone in the clear versus incoming buck or slugs from the highly focused "Cover" officers. Imagine yourself being caught in the open like that, armed only with a handgun. You've got fractions of a second to decide what to do. Not a happy prospect, or very conducive to longevity.

Bear in mind, too, that bad guys usually aren't anxious to initiate a gunfight where their adversaries are clearly alert, focused and have them heavily outgunned. Their thug culture, and immersion in Hollywood action movies, leads them to believe they can take you if you're only armed with a handgun...but they normally never risk walking into the stacked deck of a pissed-off cop (or home-owner) behind a 12 gauge.

It's always better to deter a gunfight, than to try to win one...though, again, there are always variables you can't plan for and, like we've said, things can go in the toilet in only seconds. Having a plan, and using an officer safety system like "Contact and Cover" can go a long way to keep things from sliding into chaos. if you can see any indication of "Contact and Cover", or any another area control system, being employed here, let me know because I don't.

Don't get me wrong, I gave three and a half decades of my life to LE in a big town, and no one respects the tremendous bravery of these officers more than I. But conversely, because of their bravery, we owe them the best working chance of surviving in scenarios where it often ain't easy to survive. We need to train them in successful skills and have their supervisors see to it that they're applied every time they go out on a job.