Orlando killer appears to have been ‘homegrown extremist’
The gunman whose attack on a gay nightclub left 49 victims dead appears to have been a “homegrown extremist” who espoused support for a jumble of often-conflicting Islamic radical groups, the White House and the FBI said Monday. As Orlando mourned its dead with flowers, candles and vigils, counterterrorism investigators dug into the background of 29-year-old Omar Mateen, the American-born Muslim who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. “So far, we see no indication that this was a plot directed from outside the United States, and we see no indication that he was part of any kind of network,” said FBI Director James Comey. But he said Mateen was clearly “radicalized,” at least in part via the Internet. Comey said the bureau is also trying to determine whether Mateen had recently scouted Disney World as a potential target, as reported by People.com, which cited an unidentified federal law enforcement source. “We’re still working through that,” Comey said. The FBI chief defended the bureau’s handling of Mateen during two previous investigations into his apparent terrorist sympathies. As for whether there was anything the FBI should have done differently, “so far, the honest answer is, I don’t think so,” Comey said. Despite Mateen’s pledge of fealty to the Islamic State, a murky combination of other possible motives and explanations emerged, with his ex-wife saying he suffered from mental illness and his Afghan-immigrant father suggesting he may have acted out of anti-gay hatred. He said his son got angry recently about seeing two men kiss. The Orlando Sentinel and other news organizations quoted regular customers at the gay bar as saying they had seen Mateen there a number of times. “Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,” said Ty Smith. Smith said he saw the killer inside at least a dozen times. Wielding an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen opened fire at Pulse Orlando early Sunday in a three-hour shooting rampage and hostage siege that ended with a SWAT team killing him. During the attack, he called 911 to profess allegiance to the Islamic State group. At the White House, President Barack Obama said there is no clear evidence so far that Mateen was directed by the group, calling the attack an apparent example of “homegrown extremism.” More details of the bloodbath emerged, with Orlando Police Chief John Mina saying Mateen was “cool and calm” during phone calls with police negotiators. But the chief said he decided to send the SWAT team in and bash through a wall after Mateen holed up with hostages in a bathroom and began to talk about bombs and an explosive vest. “We knew there would be an imminent loss of life,” Mina said. As it turned out, Mateen had no explosives with him. Five of the wounded were reported in grave condition, meaning the death toll could rise. A call went out for blood donations. In Orlando, mourners piled bouquets around a makeshift memorial, and people broke down in tears and held their hands to their faces while passing through the growing collection of flowers, candles and signs about a mile from the site of the massacre. About 300 employees of the Red Lobster restaurant chain — some in business suits, some in chef’s uniforms — emerged from the company’s corporate headquarters and walked two-by-two across the street to the memorial, each carrying a red or white carnation. “We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater,” vowed Mayor Buddy Dyer, whose city of a quarter-million people is known around the globe as the home of Walt Disney World and other theme parks. The tragedy hit the city’s gay and Hispanic communities especially hard. It was Latino Night at the club when the attack occurred. “As the names come out, they are overwhelmingly Latino and Hispanic names,” said Christina Hernandez, a Hispanic activist. “These were not just victims of the LBGT community, but of the Hispanic community, as well. This was senseless bloodshed.” Mateen’s grasp of the differences between Islamic extremist groups appeared shaky. During three calls with 911 dispatchers, Mateen not only professed allegiance to ISIS but also expressed solidarity with a suicide bomber from the Syrian rebel group Nusra Front, and a few years ago he claimed connections to Hezbollah, too – both ISIS enemies, according to Comey. The FBI became aware of Mateen in 2013 when co-workers reported that the private security guard claimed to have family connections to al-Qaida and to be a member of Hezbollah, too, Comey said. He was also quoted as saying he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so that he could martyr himself. The FBI launched a 10-month preliminary investigation, following Mateen, reviewing his communications and questioning him, the FBI chief said. Mateen claimed he made the remarks in anger because co-workers were teasing him and discriminating against him as a Muslim, and the FBI eventually closed the case, Comey said. His name surfaced again as part of another investigation into the Nusra Front bomber. The FBI found Mateen and the man had attended the same mosque and knew each other casually, but the investigation turned up “no ties of any consequence,” Comey said. Mateen was added to a terror watch list in 2013 when he was investigated, but was taken off it soon after the matter was closed, according to Comey. People who are in that database are not automatically barred from buying guns, and in any case Mateen purchased his weapons in June, long after he was removed from the list. On Sunday, the bloodshed started after Mateen approached the club around 2 a.m., exchanged fire with an off-duty officer working security, and then went inside and started gunning people down, police said. After two other officers arrived and exchanged gunfire with Mateen, the gunman holed up in
Did a delay in police response give Orlando shooter more time?
As the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history began to unfold, an off-duty police officer working at a gay nightclub exchanged gunfire with the suspect. But three hours passed before a SWAT team stormed the building and brought the attack to an end. The decision by law enforcement to hold off on entering the Pulse club — where more than 100 people were shot, 49 of them killed — immediately raised questions among experts in police tactics. They said the lessons learned from other mass shootings show that officers must get inside swiftly — even at great risk — to stop the threat and save lives. “We live in a different world. And action beats inaction 100 percent of the time,” said Chris Grollnek, an expert on active shooter tactics and a retired police officer and SWAT team member. Authorities in Orlando say the situation changed from an active-shooter scenario to a hostage situation once gunman Omar Mateen made it into one of the bathrooms where club-goers were hiding. He first had a shootout with the off-duty officer at the club’s entrance. Then two other officers arrived and the firing continued. Experts say there’s a big difference between responding to a lone gunman and a shooter who has hostages. In active-shooter situations, police are now trained to respond immediately, even if only one or two officers are available to confront the suspect. In a hostage crisis, law enforcement generally tries to negotiate. Once in the restroom, Mateen called 911 and made statements pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said Monday. That’s when the shooting stopped and hostage negotiators began talking with him, the chief said. “We had a team of crisis negotiators that talked to the suspect, trying to get as much information as possible, what we could do to help resolve the situation … He wasn’t asking a whole lot, and we were doing most of the asking,” Mina said. But Mateen soon began talking about explosives and bombs, leading Mina to decide about 5 a.m. to detonate an explosive on an exterior wall to prevent potentially greater loss of life. The explosives did not penetrate the wall completely, so an armored vehicle was used to punch a 2-foot-by-3-foot hole in the wall about 2 feet from the ground. “We knew there would be an imminent loss of life,” Mina said. Hostages started running out, as did Mateen, who was killed in a shootout with SWAT team members. It turned out there were no explosives. Police tactics changed after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where the first officers to arrive exchanged fire with the gunmen but then stopped and waited for the SWAT team. That took 45 minutes. By then, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had killed 12 students and a teacher. At the time, the standard police practice was to set up a perimeter, wait for SWAT officers and then go inside. Authorities began to realize that the delayed response gave suspects more time to kill. “We can’t just let him have free rein and continue to shoot,” said Ben Tisa, a former FBI agent and former SWAT team member. Experts point to other mass shootings where a delay in confronting the shooter probably gave the gunman time to maneuver and attack. A mass shooting in 1984 at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California, offered one of the earliest lessons, with 21 people being killed and 19 wounded before a SWAT team killed the gunman about 45 minutes later. Incorrect or incomplete information is typical during police emergencies. And the gravity of the decisions is not lost on SWAT teams and their commanders. Civilian lives are at risk, along with those of police officers who are often outgunned by suspects. “You have split seconds,” said Thor Eells, commander of the Colorado Springs Police Department and chairman of the board of the National Tactical Officers Association. Almost immediately after the shooting began, the nightclub posted a note on its Facebook page telling people to get out and “keep running.” Grollnek, a consultant who conducts active shooter training for law enforcement, said that’s another lesson from other mass shootings: Civilians can’t expect to stay safe by heeding the old advice to hide or shelter in place. “The problem is we’re failing to evolve by learning the lesson that hiding does not work,” he said. “Running works. Everyone who escapes to tell their story says, ‘I ran away. I heard a noise on my left, and I went to my right and I got out.’” But Grollneck reserved his anger for the police commanders in Florida who didn’t allow SWAT team members to enter until several hours after the shooter began the attack. “How have we failed so poorly that we did not learn our lesson … when we see SWAT teams respond and not making entry creates victims,” he said. “Period. End of story.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Planned Donald Trump speech to pivot from Hillary Clinton to terror, immigration following Orlando attack
Following the nation’s most deadly mass shooting that left 50 dead at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Donald Trump said Sunday he will change the subject of a planned Monday speech to address “this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security.” Trump had originally planned to use the speech to present a litany of attacks against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. According to senior Trump campaign staff, the presumptive GOP nominee was going to serve up a “charge sheet” against Clinton, including broadside attacks on her infamous private email server, her handling of the Benghazi consulate attack, and allegations for the former Secretary of State tried to silence women who may have been involved with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. While Republican consultants and party leaders have advised Trump to avoid the more personally tinged attacks, most of which date back decades, events have forced Trump to abandon the speech altogether. Trump said in a statement Sunday he will instead continue a favored line of argument: the need to “get tough” on what he called radical Islamic terrorism and stem the tide of immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Earlier in the day Trump said he “appreciated the congratulations” from supporters who said he was right to make Islamic terrorism a central focus of his campaign, and claimed credit for predicting more attacks would afflict the nation. “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. In the statement, Trump fixated on the attacker’s Muslim and Middle Eastern origins, rather than his anti-gay views or his use of a legally purchased AR-15 assault rifle in the deadly dance club siege. “The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan,” said Trump. “According to Pew, 99 percent of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law.” Trump brandished those facts as evidence in favor of his notorious plan to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. “We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States,” said Trump. “Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term – and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing. “If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen — and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore,” Trump continued. Trump made no specific reference to the apparent anti-LGBT motivation behind the shooter’s attack. Trump will give his revamped remarks on Monday at New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, NH.
