NATIONAL NEWS

Videos: Michael Vance Shootout in Oklahoma

November 1, 2016 By Motor City 911 Leave a Comment

Michael Vance Shootout with Oklahoma Highway Patrol

OKLAHOMA CITY (Tulsa World) — New details emerged Tuesday as the Oklahoma Highway Patrol released graphic videos of the chase and killing of fugitive double-murder suspect Michael Dale Vance Jr.

The video shows Vance blowing through a roadblock around 9:55 p.m. Sunday in Custer County in a stolen farm truck, exchanging gunfire with authorities under the cover of nightfall. He was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle.

A pursuing trooper fires his M4 assault rifle through the windshield of his patrol vehicle. Vance exits the truck, which rolls backward. He can be seen on video from a law enforcement helicopter using his vehicle as shield while firing at troopers.

“He had every intention of taking troopers with him,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Chief Rick Adams said Tuesday.

About 9:59 p.m., Vance falls to the ground after being struck. It was not immediately known how many bullet wounds he sustained.

His weapon had no rounds left when it was recovered, Adams said.

The video was released during a press conference attended by a number of law enforcement entities, including the OHP; Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation; FBI; Oklahoma County Sheriff; Wellston Police Department; U.S. Marshals Service; Custer County Sheriff; and Roger Mills County Sheriff. Troopers involved in the shooting were Micah Whittington, Brian Costanza, Chris Hanover, Trent Keasler and Brandon Seward.

Adams said the troopers did an extraordinary job under very stressful conditions.
Vance had been on the run since Oct. 23 when he allegedly shot two Wellston police officers who are recovering from their injuries, said Wellston Police Chief Tim Estes.

“Everybody is going to be OK,” he said.

Later that day, Vance drove to the Luther home of his relatives, Valerie Kay Wilkson and Ronald Everett Wilkson, allegedly killing them and stealing their vehicle. Around 2:51 Sunday, authorities received information that Vance was in the area of the western Oklahoma town of Hammon. Around 9:47 p.m., law enforcement was notified that Dewey County Sheriff Clay Sander had attempted to pull over a stolen vehicle driven by Vance, Adams said. The vehicle was dragging chain that was causing sparks that the sheriff believed could cause a fire, Adams said.Sander was wounded when he exchanged shots with Vance, but is expected to recover, Adams said. That confrontation was followed by Vance running the roadblock and his fatal gunfight with troopers. “Vance could have ended this any time peacefully,” said Public Safety Commissioner Michael Thompson. He called Vance a determined violent criminal with no regard for life.

Thompson said that while none of his officers were struck by gunfire, some might have hearing damage.

Thompson said that in his 27 years in law enforcement, he has never seen this level of cooperation between county, state and federal law enforcement entities.

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Tour bus crash in California kills at least 13, closes I-10

October 23, 2016 By MC911

Palm Springs, California: Thirteen people were killed when a tour bus slammed into the back of a big rig on Interstate 10 near Palm Springs on Sunday morning while the bus was carrying a group of passengers to Los Angeles after a trip to a casino near the Salton Sea.

Thirty-one people were injured in the the predawn crash, which shut down the westbound side of the freeway for much of the day.

Passengers were believed to be sleeping when the bus collided with the tractor-trailer truck shortly after 5 a.m., California Highway Patrol Chief Jim Abele said at a news conference.

“It was a substantial impact,” Abele said, explaining that the bus plowed 15 feet into the back of the truck.

A total of 44 passengers were aboard the bus. The bus driver was among those killed, Abele said. He described the survivors’ injuries as minor to moderate.

He said it was unclear why the bus was traveling at a much faster speed than the truck. It’s also unclear whether drugs or alcohol were involved, or whether fatigue was a factor, Abele said.

“Right now we’re looking at everything,” Abele told reporters.

He did not give the nationalities of the victims but said authorities were in contact with consular officials of Mexico, Japan and Australia. He said the driver of the truck survived and had minor injuries.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board were on their way to participate in the investigation.

The freeway was littered with mangled wreckage and the front of the bus was enveloped by the big rig’s trailer.

Dozens of firefighters swarmed the scene, struggling to reach victims. They used chainsaws to break open the vehicle and make their way into its front, even though it was clear there was barely any room to fit inside.

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Smash-and-grab gun shop burglaries rise in Carolinas

October 23, 2016 By MC911

(Greenville News) — While the Oct. 13 smash-and-grab burglary at The Gun Shop may have been an isolated incident for Simpsonville, it’s one of several in the region that have caught the attention of law enforcement, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Just before 3 a.m. on Oct. 13, Simpsonville police said three unknown suspects drove a stolen, white Chrysler minivan with a North Carolina license plate through the front door. The suspects then stole an undisclosed number of handguns before fleeing in a waiting getaway car, according to Simpsonville police investigator James Donnelly.

Eight days later, a case eerily similar to the one in Simpsonville took place near Charlotte. According to police reports, a stolen Mercedes SUV was intentionally driven through the front of Eagle Guns in Concord, North Carolina around 3 a.m. Friday morning. After the crash, weapons were stolen.

According to reports, more than 420 guns have been stolen in the Charlotte area this year.

“North Carolina’s getting slammed,” Donnelly said.

The act of purposely driving a vehicle into a store to burglarize it has become common enough that it’s now called ram-raiding. According to news reports, vehicles have also been driven into gun shops in Buford, Georgia, Newport News, Virginia and Louisville, Kentucky since July.

Federal investigators are offering a cash reward of up to $15,000 for tips leading to the arrest of those responsible for the incident at The Gun Shop.

The ATF is offering a reward of up to $7,500, which will be matched by the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the trade association for the firearms industry — for a total of $15,000, Special Agent Gerod King of the Charlotte division of ATF said.

“One of the crimes becoming more prevalent in North and South Carolina has been gun shop burglaries and robberies,” King said. “We’re putting a priority on those, so therefore we’re offering rewards on pretty much all of these cases throughout the Carolinas.”

The Gun Shop manager Adam Medlin and Donnelly said they could not say what was taken from the shop as the ATF has yet to release that information. Donnelly said the case is progressing well though, and even better than he expected at this point.

“Things are looking positive and we should have some resolution soon,” Donnelly said.

Two days after the minivan destroyed the entrance at The Gun Shop, the store reopened for business, albeit with a very different look. The 3-year-old shop’s front door used to have windows on either side with security bars in one section of the windows. The windows and glass door were framed by a brick border.

After reopening on Oct. 15, the windows that were located on one side of the door have been replaced by a red concrete wall. A barred window remains on the other side of the glass door, but now in front of the glass portion of the building are five red concrete bollards separated a few feet apart.

Simpsonville Interim Police Chief Steve Moore believes the last time a Simpsonville gun shop was burglarized prior to this occurred in 2009. He said thieves in that case broke through a concrete block at the back entrance with a sledgehammer. The latest incident has him wondering what’s next.

“Businesses like these try to take precautions because they know this could happen. … The Gun Shop looked pretty secure (in the past),” Moore said. “That doesn’t account for the brazen, drive-your-car-through-the-front-door sort of guys that we had happen here.

“Any kind of physical security that you have up can be defeated given the ability of the criminal or outside the box thinking.”

While there are quite a few other stores that sell guns in Simpsonville, including pawn shops and Walmart, the Gun Shop is the first with a shooting range. Prior to opening on June 1, 2013, a city ordinance was changed to allow the discharging of a firearm in an indoor shooting gallery within city limits.

Moore said a big concern during debate by City Council when discussing the ordinance change was noise. He said the Police Department has yet to hear a complaint of noise coming from The Gun Shop.

“They spoke with the library next door, and library officials didn’t have an ounce of concern,” Simpsonville Planning and Zoning Manager Jason Knudsen said. “There’s nothing over and beyond they had to do to open there. … The range itself had to be approved by federal regulations.

“There’s no public safety issue there. It’s only a perceived issue.”

Anyone who was in the area of N.E. Main St. between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Oct. 13 is asked to contact Donnelly at jdonnelly@simpsonvillepd.com or call Greenville County Crime Stoppers at 864-23-CRIME.

Tipsters can also contact the ATF at 1-800-ATF-GUNS or email ATFTips@atf.gov.

All calls and tips will be kept confident

Some Emergency Agencies Turn Off Radio Encryption

October 12, 2016 By MC911

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Some police and fire departments are bucking a trend to conceal dispatch communications from the public, acknowledging that radio encryption has the potential to backfire and put first responders in danger.

Agencies with digital radio systems have turned off the encryption to their main dispatching channels and others have decided not to turn it on. They say their officers and firefighters may not be heard during emergencies by responders at neighboring departments with radio systems that either don’t have access to their encrypted channels or aren’t advanced enough to have encryption capability.

Officials also say they are addressing concerns from critics who argue encryption decreases police transparency at a time when it is needed, especially in the wake of shootings of unarmed black people by police officers.

“The overwhelming opinion of encryption is that it works great for preplanned tactical environments like SWAT teams staging a situation,” said Eddie Reyes, deputy chief of Amtrak police and chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police communications and technology committee.

“But for day-to-day operations where officers are going across borders in emergency pursuits or foot pursuits, that’s where it tends to break down,” he said. “A good number of agencies are still operating on antiquated systems and would not have the ability to accept encryption.”

When Reyes was working for Arlington, Virginia, police in 2006, he said, an officer who fatally shot a teenager outside a restaurant inadvertently switched over to encryption mode on his portable radio. There was temporary chaos on the radio when officers en route couldn’t communicate with the officer in the shooting because their radios weren’t in encryption mode, Reyes said.

A slow trend continues toward encryption, which has been around for years. It hides communications from public airwaves by modifying voice signals with coded algorithms, preventing people from listening via radio scanners, the internet and cellphone apps. Only people with encryption “keys,” the information needed to access the encrypted channels, can listen.

Open government advocates say the practice withholds crucial information about emergency situations from the public. Concerns also have been raised by news organizations, which say it cuts off journalists who monitor public safety broadcasts from being alerted to major events.

Police officials say they’re worried about the safety of their officers, because criminals have been known to track officers’ movements by listening to police communications. They also say they want to prevent the public broadcasting of people’s personal information, including medical histories and juveniles’ names.

They further cite violence against officers around the country over the past few months and the response to the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, when people listening to police communications posted misleading and inaccurate information on social media.

Among police departments that have recently encrypted all communications are those in Anchorage, Alaska; Riverside, California; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Newtown, Connecticut.

“What happened this summer really culminated in making the decision,” Newtown Police Chief James Viadero said, referring to violence against police. “I had a legitimate concern for my officers.”

Other departments are taking the opposite approach. Police in New Orleans; Spokane, Washington; and other cities have vowed not to encrypt their main dispatch channels. Others that had encrypted their communications have turned it off.

Police in Mansfield, Massachusetts, turned off their encryption more than a year ago after officers expressed concern they couldn’t talk with counterparts in some neighboring towns, Police Chief Ronald Sellon said. Mansfield is home to the 20,000-seat Xfinity Center outdoor amphitheather, and there were worries about communications with other agencies if there was a mass casualty event at the theater.

Last year, Washington, D.C., officials switched off the encryption for fire communications. The move came after firefighters had problems using their radios in a subway tunnel during an emergency response. The tunnel filled with smoke because of an electrical malfunction, killing one person and sickening dozens more.

The Metro transit agency, which had a radio system in the subway that allowed below-ground communications by city firefighters, said the radio problems were the result of the fire department changing its own radio system, including adding encryption, without telling the transit agency. City officials denied encryption caused the problems.

Police in Naugatuck, Connecticut, like many departments, are keeping their main dispatch channel open to the public while maintaining encrypted channels to use during tactical operations.

Naugatuck Police Chief Christopher Edson cited the need to be able to communicate with other emergency responders, as well as the expense of encryption, which can cost several hundred dollars per radio to implement. Another issue was not wanting to block out the public, he said.

“We also want to be transparent,” he said, “during this particular climate in the country.”

Concord PD LEOs Shoot & Kill Perp Following Stabbing of CPD K9

October 12, 2016 By MC911

CONCORD, CA – A suspect has died after being shot by two police officers in Concord following the stabbing of a man as well as a police canine who responded to the scene, a police spokesman said.

Officers responded at about 2 p.m. to a report of a stabbing in the 2900 block of Crawford Street, Concord police spokesman Cpl. Christopher Blakely said. About a half-hour later, officers located the suspect in the backyard of a home not associated with him in the 1400 block of San Jose Avenue, near Prospect Street and only a block from the Concord BART station. After giving the suspect orders to surrender, officers sent a police canine named Jelle in to try to subdue the suspect, who used some sort of garden shears to stab the dog in the face, Blakely said. Blakely said he didn’t yet have the details about what happened next, but two officers shot the suspect, who was taken to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and later died.

The victim in the initial stabbing, which involved a weapon other than the shears, is in stable condition at a hospital, he said. Blakely said the suspect, a man in his 30s whose name is not yet being released, had prior contacts with police. He didn’t immediately know more details about the initial stabbing, which occurred outside of a home.

The police dog Jelle is being treated at a veterinary hospital and will be OK, he said.

The two officers who shot the man both had more than 10 years of experience with the Police Department and are being interviewed about the incident by investigators, Blakely said.

While what immediately preceded the shooting remains under investigation, Blakely said the fact that the dog was stabbed would not by itself warrant an officer to open fire.

“As much as we love our dogs, a police canine is not considered an officer,” he said. “Officers aren’t going to shoot just because the dog is getting stabbed.”

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