November 13, 2007
Breaking News: SWAT Team at McBride's Guns
Before dawn this morning, someone broke into McBride's Guns on San Gabriel, and they are thought to still be there, surrounded by ammunition and weapons. Schools in the area have been put on lockdown, and a SWAT team has surrounded the store.
It seems to be unknown whether there is someone still actually there in the store, but the security company contracted by McBride's detected movement earlier this morning. Streets in the area (Lamar between 29th and 31st) have been closed and a few buildings in the immediate vicinity have been evacuated.
11:50 am update: Police have entered the building and are looking for any suspects [KEYE]. That portion of Lamar is still closed. . .
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Police received an anonymous tip that there were guns inside the store.
So after scaring the bejeebus out of everyone in the area and putting the area between 29th and 32nd streets on lockdown good ol' APD has ended negotiations with an empty building (McBrides Guns). The so called "standoff" went on for over 9 hours. I think the real question about APD is when do they NOT respond to an emergency with the SWAT team.
Dead birds on Congress, call the SWAT team.
Man in black military fatigues with gun...supposedly, call the SWAT team.
Alarm goes off in the early hours at McBride's Guns, call the SWAT team.
Now I am no cop here, but common sense tells me that it's probably good to have some sort of witness confirmation before going to the media and announcing you are in a "standoff" with some imaginary person.
I suspect it was probably a cat, maybe a possum.
Regardless I am sure APD is just disappointed that there wasn't a minority that they could shoot and kill.
with all due respect to the posters above, i think that someone breaking into a GUN store-- with the phone lines cut and it being reported by the security monitoring system that there was movement inside the store, it would have been stupid of APD to have treated this situation any different.
Sure, in retrospect it seems like over-reaction but you'd be the first to cry about it if something catastrophic HAD happened.