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There has been a shooting at the mall. All traffic and exits are shut down.
peace ops s2

This shooting is all over the news. Unless absolutly necessaty I would avoid the Southcenter area for the for the rest of today. And lister to PSOPS S1 on Vallycom or ESPC which is the command and opps channel.

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Everettmci

Valley Com had PSOPS S1 patch to Primary. Valley SWAT was on SPEC OPS 2. I found it intresting that County had Tac 30 members help out with the search but the where on PSOPS S1 they where not able to talk to Valley SWAT. I would of had all Tactical units on MARS or LERN or the units on traffic control.

I noticed that the "shooter" got away -- along with just about everyone else involved. Seems a shame that most South King County police agencies still do not understand "Inter-operability communications".

OJ here. 'IF I was the shooter' I would have been in my car in 45 sec's and freeway in another 45. If they have video of a Sienna leaving please delete this post please.

The shooting wasn't outside Victoria's Secret, so you should be ok.

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I generate Board Warnings

Hey MTM, are you saying that due to a perceived lack of interop. that the suspect got away??? Kind of a hasty generalization, don't you think? And I don't get the slam on the South KC departments. Most are top-notch organizations.

I listened to the coms, and the patch to PS OPS S1 and S2 was extremely swift by Valleycom, so the interop was indeed there.

I mean c'mon, a shooting in a gigantic mall with people everywhere. This is a very difficult setting to establish containment. And with a bazillion calls to 911, I'm sure information was changing by the second.

Care to amplify your resonse?

(1) like Mark pointed out -- any idiot shooter would have done the deed and would have ran directly to the parking lot and hopped on the freeway and back to the hood. --- That seems to be what happened. The dude got away. You no that the Mall Security has no way to link up with any real Law enforcement -- so there's a big gap in time and information. Ask any reporter when they have ever heard of a "lock-down" that provided a suspect ( except in a jail or prison ). They don't work. It's all done as PR and to protect the Cops from possible court actions. Unless -- 911 has received valid information to confirm a "take over shooter" -- the only way to catch the bad guys to to circle the wagons around the mall and wait for the bad guys to try to get away. Google search and find ONE report of a "mall" or "School" shooting -- when a "lock down" provided the suspect. NADA. None. It doesn't work. --- You may not agree -- but I ran a PSAP 911 center in Los Angeles County and have attended losts of training sessions on when and how to use SWAT. This goes all the way back to the 1970's when members of the George Jackson Brigade made false 911 calls and tryed to rob a bank. That bank was in the same Seatac Mall. (2) Most large Police Agencies now use both Dispatch channels and a paired "Tactical or incident response" channel. After a call goes out -- all responding units move to the "L-tac" or local tactical channel -- which becomes the sole radio channel for all operations. Every LAPD and LASO station / area has a paired "L-Tac" response channel. Stopping a shooter -- outside the mall would have been much safer for both the public and police.

Alright, I get your point about lockdown vs. setting up a perimeter, and I simply don't know if both were done or not.

However, in regard to interop., it was there and Tukwila units (and a whole host of other South King Co. agencies who were added to back) were on Tukwila's TG. Additionally, the patch to PS OPS was established immediately, so that KCSO units could communicate.

As far as mall security goes, it's a private facility and the probably have some sort of business level radio system. Perhaps there is room for improvement there.

MTM, did you actually hear the incident? I heard the initial fire tone-out and then started listening to both PD and FD. By the time I had one of my scanners on the TPD/DMPD talkgroup, outside PD agencies were already en route. VC had a patch up to PSOPS immediately and the KC Sheriff flooded S.Center with units. Pretty much every VC PD agency responded. I heard announcements that FWay sent 7 cars, Auburn sent 7 cars, and on and on. This happened within minutes of the initial dispatch. Eventually VC even patched TPD/DMPD/PSOPS S1 with LERN so WSP could communicate.

Compare that to the N. King car chase of a few years back where nobody patched, nobody talked to each other, and there was basically zero coordination between agencies. S. King (KCSO and VC) is light years ahead of everybody else in this regard, and your statments make me wonder if you actually routinely listen to operations down here.

You mention a paired dispatch and tac channel. This is exactly what VC and KCSO do. VC has a paired tac for every city PD dispatch talkgroup. Major incidents get switched to the tac. I suspect that the reason why they stayed on the dispatch channel in this incident was because there were off-duty TPD officers working OT security in the mall who probably called out shots fired before anybody even called 911. Making them look down to change the channel on their radio is a bad idea in an active shooter situation, so just leave the incident on the main dispatch channel and deal with it.

Again -- it seems very easy for you to be critical, but I'm not sure it's clear how much of an understanding you have of the ops at this incident or the day to day workings of VC. Just my opinion.

Inter-ops was very good. Using SWAT and locking down the mall -- was a bad idea. And I am glad that you feel so strongly about the South County Law Enforcement.

They're UHF repeated. The signal is actually quite strong, and if at least one officer had a scanner, they could at least relay information. However I'm sure that at some point at least one officer met up with one security agent and they could relay info back and forth that way. Definitely not the most efficient way, but much easier than trying to convince VC that mall security needs interop into their system.

:roll: :roll:

I'm not even sure how to respond to the statement that they should not have called out SWAT and locked down the mall. It's wrong on so many different levels I don't know where to begin.

Again, did you hear the incident?

I'm hurt. No one has even mentioned how good the coverage was. The mall ownership ponied up an obscence amount of money for a Distributed Antenna Network in the facility last summer. Not only does it carry all of the Public Safety traffic, it also carries many of the wireless carries. The mall and the city should be commended for looking forward. Radio coverage was not an issue.

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I generate Board Warnings

That's very cool.

I remember "back in the day" when SPD/SFD was on UHF, a 35+ story bldg where I worked in DT SEA had a wireline connected remote RX for SFD, with a mess of heliax coiled in the bottom of the elevator shaft. Not the best of "distributed" antenna systems, but it worked very well.

SFD could respond and enjoy HH coverage throughout the entire bldg. I remember as the move to trunking occured, one fear I had was the loss of this infrastructure, coupled with early 800MHz range / penetration issues, put the public at greater risk. I have no current knowedge of that Bldg, and given who occupies it, I doubt we will ever know.

To cover a mall is a far greater challenge. I was in a 1 sq block verticle bldg. Malls have all kinds of nooks and crannies that can make RF hell.

Good work Sean.

As to I-Op issues, I was in SF Bay area, read about it in the news, have no knowledge of degree of success. Can't weigh in.

I will say I don't like the idea of being locked in a facility against my will, regardless of how others feel it is "for my own good". I like to make those decisions for myself. I do concur that MTM appears to be accurate in saying that, to date, it does not appear a "lockdown" has ever produced a suspect.

This was a tragedy with an ironic twist of luck:
no innocent bystanders.

"I think all bullets should cost $5,000... 'cuz if bullets cost $5,000, there would be NO MORE innocent bystanders..."
Chris Rock