"To all the naysayers.... what is the point of having all these wonderful SWAT teams now if they can't be used.
They need their practice. If it isn't 107 year olds it might be you they practice on. I vote for the 107 year olds. Plenty of targets of opportunity in our old folk's homes." -- 107-year-old Arkansas man, Monroe Isadore, killed in shootout with S.W.A.T.
Negotiations continued for some time and when S.W.A.T arrived, negotiations still continued. S.W.A.T. was able to insert a camera into the room, where Isadore was, and confirmed he was armed with a handgun. S.W.A.T. inserted gas into the room, after it was evident negotiations were unsuccessful, in hopes Isadore would surrender peacefully. When the gas was inserted into the room, Isadore fired rounds at the S.W.A.T. officers that had inserted the gas from outside a bedroom window.
Shortly afterwards, a S.W.A.T. entry team, inside the residence, breached the door to the bedroom and threw a distraction device into the bedroom. Isadore then began to fire on the entry team and the entry team engaged Isadore, killing him.
For quite some time now one of my standing "jokes" has been that when I died I wanted to go as "a very old man who was respected in my community who shoots it out in the woods with the Federal Agents." This little bit of slight -- very slight -- humor was first minted during the era when such a thing happening to a law-abiding American citizen of the Caucasian persuasion was less likely than a meteor strike on my forehead. Now, however, as we see the startling and increasing transmogrification of some SWAT teams from law-enforcement operations into brown-shirted tools of local and national bureaucracies and governments, I may have to reconsider my "wish." Lest it be granted free of charge by officers of a less than trustworthy stock.
I'm not at all sure what was kicking through the nervous system of a 107-year-old-man, but I'm pretty sure that just holding the situation steady for a couple of hours would have resulted in a shooting but a nap.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at September 11, 2013 11:38 AM