Arvada standoff & hostage, as paged
Family says he wasn't armed.
Don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy for the guy taking a kid hostage, but I always wonder if a para-military strike force weren't even available, if these things would end in suicide by cop as much as they do nowadays.
Many of the raids one reads about, nobody was armed inside, people get shot, cops "investigate" and the family sues if they even have enough money to get a halfway decent lawyer. Nobody is ever fired.
Oh well. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Dude is dead because he was stupid.
"Take care of business" these days definitely doesn't include waiting until crazy agitated idiots calm down -- breach and shoot is the far more common "solution" judging by the news articles.
No idea if any agency tracks how often they used to call in SWAT in say, the 80s vs today.
Just an observation. I'd rather the cops come home alive than the alternative, in cases of extremely stupid violent people, for sure.
Train military urban tactics, and arm police to the teeth, and you're going to use those tactics and weapons more often than you used to, is all I'm saying, I suppose.
And there's scenarios where it's needed. The idiot with a knife to the lady's throat at the convenience store a couple weeks ago comes to mind. Whoever the officer was with the rifle made a hell of a shot.
At least in that case there was zero question the idiot holding the hostage had a deadly weapon and had it at someone's throat. These grey ones are a little more troublesome.
All someone has to do is say you might have a weapon and you might end up dead and the shooting called "justified".
Fascinating problem for our society. We paid to arm and train the equivalent of "special forces" operators and put them in place in every city in the country.