Tag: SWAT

Armed Sydney attacker hoists black Islamic flag

A police operation is underway at a café in central Sydney, where up to 40 hostages are being held by an armed attacker and a black flag with Arabic inscriptions can be seen. Australia is contributing to the US-led operation against the Islamic State.

As the siege was about to enter its sixth hour, at least five people apparently escaped from the building. Live footage showed heavily-armed police regrouping near the cafe’s door, but not entering it.

A senior Lindt Australia official said that 10 staff and up to 30 customers could be held inside the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place. There were “probably 30 customers” at the time of the attack, Sky Business quoted Lindt Chief Executive Steve Loane as saying.

There was no immediate confirmation of the exact number of assailants.

Live TV footage showed people standing inside the café with their hands pressed against the windows. At least one attacker was caught on camera wearing a traditional Islamic cap.

The hostages were forced to hold a black flag with an Arabic inscription, prompting fears that ruthless Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants were behind the attack.

The flag – which appeared different from the one typically used by the IS – was identified as the shahada, or the statement of Islamic faith. The shahada itself only contains the religious inscription “There is no god but the God, Mohammed is the messenger of the God.”

The armed Islamist gunman reportedly contacted a local radio station saying that four bombs were planted and demanding negotiations with Australian PM Tony Abbott.

The attack, which took place in Sydney’s central business district, forced nearby buildings in Martin Place – including the Reserve Bank of Australia – into lockdown.

The US has evacuated its Sydney consulate, which is close to the Lindt Cafe, Reuters quoted a spokeswoman as saying.

Reports on the ground suggest that young women being held hostage in the cafe are being used as a shield.

Earlier, Australian 2GB radio host Ray Hadley said that the captor had demanded to speak with Prime Minister Tony Abbott live on the radio.

Hadley added that hostages inside the cafe contacted him, but he declined to air their conversation due to safety concerns of those inside the building.

Another report claimed that gunmen have explosive suicide belts.

Meanwhile, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said that no direct contact was made with the captor(s).

Dozens of police, including a SWAT team, were dispatched to the scene, and a couple hundred people were held back by cordons amid the evacuation of nearby buildings.

Media speculations connecting the attack to the Islamic State have sprung up, as Australia has been supporting the US-led anti-IS coalition in Syria and Iraq. Back in September, Canberra contributed 600 troops and up to 10 military aircraft to the campaign.

In October, Australia launched its first fighter jet mission in Iraq against the IS. “The Super Hornet aircraft conducted an air interdiction and close air support mission over northern Iraq overnight,” the Australian Defence Force said in a statement.

ABC News live video showed that at least three people escaped through the emergency exit. A Sydney police representative confirmed that the hostages who had managed to escape were safe.

The militarization of American policing

swatOn Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart’s former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart’s basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart’s father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Their usual aim is to “clear” a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education’s SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe’s emperors and monarchs. – WSJ