Exciting craziness to monitor earlier tonight, starting around 6:40PM! St George PD Kilo-1 (K-9 unit) makes an arrest of a female for outstanding warrants.
He & his K-9 get her to Purgatory Jail's sallyport area, and as the human officer is getting the human miscreant out of the K-9 Unit SUV, he observes that the arrested, hand-cuffed (and assumably, searched) suspect is now brandishing a firearm!
I tune-in just in-time to hear a very excited "Kilo-1" tell "Control" (Dispatch) that he needs emergency help in the jail's sallyport area (sounded like when he saw the gun, he beat-feet in retreat). Next thing you know, he yells something about "she's got a gun!" About 40 painful seconds later, I hear on the Purgatory Jail repeater the report that an SGPD officer in the sallyport needs emergency help, followed-up quickly by the advisement that the subject has a gun. Upon hearing this, there's pandemonium on the jail freq -- some corrections officers are yelling that they're grabbing firearms & will be en-route, some are saying they are grabbing their SWAT gear & will be en route, someone is yelling at their controller to call the lieutenant on the phone & notify him, to which the jail controller asks "Which Lt?" The response was "I don't give a sh*t, just notify one!"
Meanwhile, back on the SGPD primary talk group, this bad-*** ***** is now in the driver's seat of the SGPD K-9 unit SUV and is trying to drive off. I *assume* the sallyport rollup door was down, but that she drove through it. Not sure if I heard this right in all their & my excitement, but I might have heard the officer report that instead of securing his sidearm in the jail sallyport weapons locker, he'd placed it in his front seat, thus the suspect would then have access to yet another firearm (this would tend to explain why he seemed to retreat from her without firing shots at her or the vehicle).
She takes off in the SUV, with the poor K-9 secured in his pen in the back, and leads multiple agencies on a chase down SR-9 thru Hurricane & Laverkin, up SR-17 into Toquerville, on I-15 South, to exit 16 (good ol' SR-9 again). Spike strips were deployed, but their first victim was an overly enthusiastic WCSO deputy, eventually they took out one & then another tire on the marked SGPD SUV (just it's alley lights were on). After about 20 minutes or so of this pursuit which involved up to 15 LE vehicles (not including the LE vehicle the suspect & her captive, the K-9 were in), the vehicle stops around the Texaco station near I-15 & SR-9.
More pandemonium on the radio.... first their are calls of the suspect being in-custody (10-82), but then 20 or 30 seconds later, there's a report of "SHOTS FIRED!" quickly followed-up by the update that no officers were injured, but EMS needs to arrive ASAP for the suspect (who now suddenly is referred to as a male -- is that ANOTHER thing that the arresting officer from SGPD failed to notice?).
I'm not 100% sure if one or more officers shot the person (later described again as being a female), if she shot herself, or what, but as of about 5 minutes after the shooting, she could be heard yelling in the background, so (unfortunately?) I expect her to survive.
When all was said & done, a UHP Trooper was asked by UHP Cedar if he'd fired a shot. His response was no, but that she was shot *while* he was in the process of tackling her. I hope that means that no officers fired any shots while some officers were going hands-on with the suspect, & that she shot herself.
She's now at Dixie Regional Medical Center, enjoying first-class medical service paid-for by us tax payers, and the county's critical incident team is at the final location, doing their investigation.
Meanwhile, before the SGPD K-9 officer is grilled about how he missed finding the firearm she had (albeit, it was described as a .380 type, which can be very small), I hope he's grilling a steak for his poor, traumatized K-9.
Communications were on FOUR different channels during this felony pursuit, which had speeds up to at least 105MPH (& again, suspect was handcuffed -- is it a 'courtesy' around here to cuff females hands in front of them?).
All four radio channels were UCAN talk-groups -- SGPD 1, SO 1, East Law (Hurricane & Washington City PD) & UHP Cedar - South. As usual, no one made any effort to get the multiple units from the multiple agencies off their multiple road-patrol/dispatch channels and onto one of the many mutual-aid channels that the UCAN network offers. "Interoperability" is the usual selling-point for UCAN, but down here, in my opinion, it's been proven time & time again that the officers are ignorant and the LE dispatchers & SGPD Communications Division (which provides contracted PSAP & dispatch functions for all the local public safety except Hildale/Colorado City) management are grossly, inexcusably NEGLIGENT when it comes to either advising units or doing a dynamic regroup from their consoles to automatically switch units to an Ops channel for this sort of fluid, multi-agency/multi-jurisdiction event. Sooner or later, this communications negligence is going to turn into gross negligence that gets someone killed. Some officers did switch on their own volition to the talk-group of whatever agency who was taking lead during the pursuit.
Officers were not reminded on the SGPD channel that in theory, the suspect in the stolen patrol vehicle could be listening to their comms, I have no reason to believe the SGPD dispatcher (or supervisor) at 'Control" was intelligent enough to know that the radio in the stolen patrol vehicle could be remotely shut-off by the console, or that any efforts were made to communicate with her via the vehicle's UCAN radio.
