Las Vegas Police were unsure if gunman was still inside room
“We need to pop this and see if we get any type of response from this guy, to see if he’s in here or he’s actually moved out somewhere else.”
That remark was made by a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department SWAT officer seconds before they conducted an explosive breach on the gunman’s door, almost 70 minutes after he first started firing into a crowd that left 58 people dead and almost 500 wounded.
Some experts in tactical operations agree that they waited too long to make entry into the room. Others say it turned into a barricaded suspect incident because he stopped shooting and therefore there was no urgency to make entry.
Nobody could have said for sure that night that the gunman would not have opened fire again.
In a city that bets on the odds, there was a 50/50 chance that he could have, except in this instance the stakes weren’t cash, it was human lives.
Every second counts, specifically when a shooter is firing weapons that can lay down as much fire power as was the case here.
The police never made verbal contact with the shooter Stephen Paddock.
If the police had any suspicion at all that maybe he “moved out somewhere else,” then why wasn’t entry made sooner?
If the gunman wasn’t in that room, then he was a danger to the public at large.
One tactic that is used by terrorists is to open fire, then conceal the weapon and make an escape into the panicked crowd.
Clark County Sheriff, Joe Lombardo told the press last week that the gunman planned to survive the attack and escape.
Doug authored over 135 articles on the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas Massacre, more than any other single journalist in the country. He investigates stories on corruption, law enforcement, and crime. Doug is a US Army Military Police Veteran, former police officer, deputy sheriff, and criminal investigator. Doug spent 20 years in the hotel/casino industry as an investigator and then as Director of Security and Surveillance. He also spent a short time with the US Dept. of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration. In 1986 Doug was awarded Criminal Investigator of the Year by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia for his undercover work in narcotics enforcement. In 1991 and 1992 Doug testified in court that a sheriff’s office official and the county prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence during the 1988 trial of a man accused of the attempted murder of his wife. Doug’s testimony led to a judge’s decision to order the release of the man from prison in 1992 and awarded him a new trial, in which he was later acquitted. As a result of Doug breaking the police “blue wall of silence,” he was fired by the county sheriff. His story was featured on Inside Edition, Current Affair and CBS News’ “Street Stories with Ed Bradley”. In 1992 after losing his job, at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Doug infiltrated a group of men who were plotting the kidnapping of a Dupont fortune heir and his wife. Doug has been a guest on national television and radio programs speaking on the stories he now writes as an investigative journalist. Catch Doug’s Podcast: @dougpoppa1