SWAT Team Makes Entry

Sunday afternoon I walked into the kitchen, look out the window and what do I see? An LMPD SWAT team about to make entry. Watching it on TV and in movies is one thing, watching it out your back window is something else entirely.

Of course my second thought was to photograph the whole operation. My first thought was something along the lines of 'Fuck, they've finally come for me.' Once I realized that was not the case I grabbed my camera only to discover that it still had a wide angle lens attached. After desperately searching for my telephoto lens to no avail I made an attempt to shoot with a 100mm macro lens but that worked as poorly as I'd expected and finally gave up and reverted to my old Nikon D5000 with 18-55mm kit lens attached.

The first couple photos are with the macro on my D610, the rest are with the D5000. All are heavily cropped and edited more for clarity than quality. Under other circumstances I wouldn't have posted any of these but since this is something you typically only see on TV or in movies I figured I had to share it.

When I first spotted them they were all stacked up on the left side of the house but by the time I got back with a camera they'd spread out.

Near as I can tell about ten minutes passed between me spotting them and the last one making it in the door. These photos encompass about four minutes of that time span.

You can just make out the sledgehammer in the hands of the one to the right of the door.

They ended up having to hit the door multiple times with the sledgehammer before they got it open.

No noticeable effect on the door yet but the windows busted.

Here we go again...

Not sure what they're doing at this point but they seemed quite happy to give the people inside plenty of time to get ready for them.

They sometimes call doorways vertical coffins in that line of work because of how dangerous they are to pass through during an entry. I'm guessing the one on the right is covering the one on the left as he tries to open the door.

The two of them spent far longer in front of the door than I expected, they seemed to be having difficulty getting it open. I'm no expert but it looked sloppy as hell.

Probably a good thing there was no opposition, I was pretty well lined up with the back door and stray rounds would have made my Sunday more lively than I care for.

They appeared to be working in two 4-person sections, here you can see the first group making entry.

It was like the first two made it in the door and stopped, there was a good pause before the second two entered.

There they go.

Now the second section moves to take over the first's positions.

Still nobody is in any hurry.

Keeping an eye on the window.

There must have been a traffic jam, the second section didn't make it through the door any faster than the first.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

Tail end Charlie got to stand outside for while.

It's not a large house so I'm guessing there wasn't a whole lot of room to spare for the whole team. Finally the last one made it in and then there was nothing left to see/shoot.

There's not been a whole lot of information come out yet but from what I've seen a teenager shot another teenager in the face in a car on the street that house faces. She was transported to a nearby hospital but still died. I'm guessing that was what this was about but I saw the neighbors that live there and their dogs later that day so I'm not entirely certain.