Show of police incompetence live on worldwide TV
08/25/2010 Nearly everything was wrong with the way the police handled the hostage crisis last Monday, according to regional security experts who were baffled and angered by the show of incompetence live on worldwide television, including the lone gunman monitoring ill-coordinated police operations. Rolando Mendoza, 55, a sacked police officer demanding to be cleared of corruption charges, was finally felled by a sniper’s bullet after chaotic scenes among security forces outside a tour bus he had commandeered. Eight tourists from Hong Kong lay dead or were fatally shot by the time the police seized control of the bus after a 12-hour standoff, during which the hostage taker also spoke by mobile phone with local radio stations. “The fact that there was essentially live video was mistake number one,” said assistant professor John Harrison, a homeland security analyst at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He said there should have been a media blackout to deny the hijacker feedback on what was going on around him. Instead, he was able to follow events, including frenzied speculation by serving and former police chiefs appearing on local broadcast networks, via the bus’s internal TV. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100825hed2.html |
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