05-31-2019, 09:24 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
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To prevent the Russian from needing to stop in order to engage, it would be awesome if he could open the rear doors of his box truck and have a fairly stable firing platform for engaging anyone following him. Moving atound some boxes to make a sniper's hide inside the box truck is easy, but can someone with Machinist and Mechanic (Automobile) at 12-14 somehow fix rear doors so that once opened while at any speed, they fall away backwards, so that they wouldn't flap around and interfere with shooting? If so, how long would it take and what tools would one need?
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05-31-2019, 09:27 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
There are ways of making your own equipment.
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05-31-2019, 09:41 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
In two hours?
Besides, who would? The former Spetsnaz sniper is not a communications or electronics specialist. In any case, he will enough claims on his time. The OpFor leader is a business executive with a shady past. He has actually had people use various such devices on his behalf, but would have no idea how to do it himself. Nor should he, as he is effectively an officer and has better things to do than technical tasks. There are two men who are former soldiers, former military contractors and current security contractors, as well as both having Private Investigator licenses. Theoretically, they might know how to make a jammer, but only at default from competent, but not exceptional, Electronics Operation (Communication) or their expert Electronics Operation (Security) or (Surveillance). Neither of them is a tech geek, they use electronics, they don't design or make them. At home, in Dallas, they work with people who put up security systems for a living, as well as a computer security consultant. But those co-workers are not criminals, are not there and do not, in fact, know what their fellow security contractors are doing. The dozen sicarios range from gang members who happen to have a gift for violence to former cops or infanfrymen from Bolivia or Peru. Maybe three of them have been security for a PMC. None of them are educated or have much in the way of valuable skills aside from being urban guerillas.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 05-31-2019 at 09:51 PM. |
06-01-2019, 12:54 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Shoreline, WA (north of Seattle)
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
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Is it at all possible for the OpFor to have their getaway cars on Galveston already? Because if so, switching cars a few blocks from the attack seems a lot safer, as long as you can do it away from surveillance cameras. So... if I were running this scenario, I'd have the OpFor look to ambush the ambulance a little further east, near the 61st St bridge south across Offatts Bayou. Assume the attack is successful. They take off southeast - maybe across the 61st Street bridge, maybe toward the downtown and hospital. Any witnesses see this. Police now have to consider two other exits in addition to I-45: by boat, as mentioned, and by the Bluewater Highway that heads southwest. That last is a toll bridge, though. If OpFor is being exceptionally cute, they "accidentally" leave a marina address in one of the attack cars. Transfer cars on the island (could leave them parked anywhere as long as they were careful about surveillance or home security cameras) and then try to leave via I-45. I'd guess about 15 minutes to do so. If you want to get extremely cute, there's also a railroad bridge next to I-45. If that's down, they can try to sneak across there, but it seems more cute than good. Maybe he splits up, has one of the sicario cars head down the Bluewater, then phones in another anonymous tip, betraying them to buy more time. Seems unlikely to work, though... |
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06-01-2019, 12:59 AM | #25 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
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As for the rear doors, I can see several ways of doing it within half an hour's work: Remove the pins from the hinges and replace them with something much weaker, so that a good blow will break them and make the doors fall off. This leaves the vehicle looking distinctive, and is bad for any friendly cars following you, although the Russian may not care much about that. It's also tricky to get right: too strong a material, and you may be fighting to get the doors off; too weak and they may fall off by themselves. Remove the doors beforehand, and make the truck look like the kind of beat-up vehicle that might be driving around with a load of junk in the back. Make an arrangement with bungee cords and/or wooden or metal props that will keep the doors open and not flapping. Probably the best idea. Lets you close the doors again with a minute or so of works wile stopped. Anyone got Explosives (Demolition), and willing to risk a famous quotation?
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06-01-2019, 06:59 AM | #26 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
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We shall henceforth refer to the leader of the OpFor as Raul, for that's how he introduced himself to the PCs when he made them an offer he really wishes they hadn't refused. Raul is unlikely to do much boating, at least as an adult, as he has spent most of his life in the Andes mountains, before settling in Dallas seven years ago. Raul owns horses, not a boat. I guess he might have spent some time on a yacht or two on vacation, but that's Dabbler, at best. To further simplify, we shall call Spetsnaz guy 'Igor'. Not because that's his name, but because that's what one of the two cultists in police custody called him, because he is heavily muscled, Eastern European, taciturn, scarred, ugly and served as a driver, bodyguard, handyman and general dogsbody to a warlock. Igor's age is uncertain, but as it happens, he is over fifty and fought in Afghanistan. There are suggestions that after Igor's initial service in Soviet Ground Forces Spetsnaz, he was transferred to GRU Spetsnaz service. He was stationed in Irkutsk at some point, as well as other Siberian locations, and seems to have attended arctic operations training, mechanic school and extensive sniper training during his service. He also fought in Chechnya, before apparently retiring around 2010, as part of Russian military reform. So while it is not impossible that Igor has taken a training course involving boats at some point in his life (perhaps on Lake Baikal), his military service has been in very landlocked areas. At moving into position to take down a guerilla leader with a sniper shot in urban areas or getting a truck through difficult arctic or mountain terrain, Igor is a genuine expert, but in water, he is out of his element. Quote:
A paramilitary attack on cops and EMTs is a huge deal. Enough for a massive law enforcement response, once they get organized. Quote:
Also, even once they knew for certain that the target would be taken in for an MRI and an examination at the UTMB TDCJ Hospital (because an officer told dispatch so over the open radio and the OpFor have a police scanner), there is still a 50/50 chance that the ambulance might turn left on the 71st Street intersection, take Broadway Avenue 'backward' a spell and get onto Harborside Drive much sooner than by driving Broadway Street. After all, Google Maps rates it as a faster route. All in all, the only way to be certain that the target will be moved past a given ambush point is to choose the one that is set at the first choice between multiple routes. Quote:
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 06-01-2019 at 07:02 AM. |
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06-01-2019, 08:03 AM | #27 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
Late to the party, but:
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06-01-2019, 08:46 AM | #28 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
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The Acc cap rule is pretty unrealistic, in that it produces the result of having a pistol, a carbine and a door-mounted machine gun all having the same effective engagement range. Also, reflex sights on vehicle-mounted arms would be worthless, which is demonstratably not true. I'll look up the suggestions from David Pulver and Hans Christian-Vortisch of using a penalty based on low Stability, instead of an Acc cap. I'm debating whether Igor will be prepared to fire a Barrett M82A1 CQ from inside the box truck. .50 BMG and only a 20" barrel means that the noise will feel like a grenade in there. On the other hand, he'll have $200 electronic ear muffs and a prepared spot with a shooting blanket to dampen it. If it's too loud, he'll use a LWRCI IC-SPR rifle in 5.56x45mm with a ATN X-SIGHT 4K INT 3-14X night vision scope. Less Night Vision in GURPS terms than the AN/PVS-22 UNS clip-on NV device mounted with the Vortex Razor HD GEN II 3-18X50 FFP on the Light Fifty, but any shots he makes from a moving vehicle wil be at relatively close range. Either rifle will be far more than ordinary patrolmen, who may or may not have longarms, do not have NVDs and do not have rifle vests, can deal with. Approaching too closely with anything less than armored SWAT vehicles, filled with trained officers wearing tactical vests with rifle inserts, armed with NVD-equipped weapons, is probably going to result in more officers down without necessarily stopping the OpFor. The high percentage tactic for law enforcement is to follow outside of engagement range until sufficient tactical resources can be mobilized, but the problem is that Igor might be able to shoot at any vehicle within visual range of his truck. Raul, the leader of the OpFor, is betting their lives or freedom on being able to reach the extraction point and scatter in clean vehicles before helicopters or SWAT are mobilized. Unless he's very unlucky as regards a random DPS helicopter flying by, assuming he manages to carry off the ambush at all, he's probably right about being gone before a helicopter has eyes on anything (or is airborne at all). On the other hand, it's impossible for Raul to predict exactly how many patrol vehicles will reach I-45 and the Galveston Causeway before he can cross it. If he's lucky, they might blow through without any more shooting. More likely, they'll have to discourage pursuit by taking out one or more patrol vehicles. And it's not all that unlikely that by the time the OpFor reaches the Galveston Causeway, they'll be followed by several Galveston PD and GCSO vehicles and in front of them will be an emerging improvised roadblock made of LE vehicles, probably 1-2 GCSO patrol cars, one or more Highway Patrol cars and possibly a response from either Bayou Vista PD or Texas City PD. In that last case, the OpFor odds look bad, but it's also by no means an ideal situation for the deputies, officers and patrolmen. Those would be men on routine patrol when they heard the news, wearing NIJ Level IIIA vests at best, armed with handguns and possibly having a shotgun or patrol rifle in the car, with only minutes to prepare, probably while driving at top speed toward the scene. Better hope that some of them are combat veterans and/or part-time SWAT, because the training they received in small town departments to be patrol officers or deputies does not prepare them for a situation like this. Quote:
In any case, the hope is that no one sees the truck all that clearly until it is used for the ambush. If anyone got close enough to see (it's dark, so pretty close), they'd panic because of all the men with guns, anyway, and ruin the ambush. So, that's already one point of failure for Raul to worry about, but it's not actually made any worse by having the truck be without rear doors. After the ambush, the truck will obviously be the attacking vehicle and it may be damaged and/or with bullet holes. If possible, Raul would prefer the target to be transported in the car his own driver operates, as the truck is less likely to make it, but while he believes the target can be safely helped a few steps, he needs to account for the possibility that they'll have to carry her on stretchers, in which case she might need to be put in the back of the truck (this would also mean that Igor could not use the M82A1 from the truck). In any case, after the ambush, the truck is supposed to drive 5.6 miles along the freeway before taking an exit that leads to an extraction point in a parking lot in Bayou Vista. From there, the OpFor will scatter in new getaway cars (and truck), leaving the truck and the vehicles used in the ambush. So, I think removing the doors beforehand would work fine. Quote:
There was a time during the afternoon when the OpFor believed they'd have to ambush the PCs once it got dark. It's not implausible that someone went to the store and bought something to use to blow up or burn a PC-mobile full of guns, if it was easy to obtain. Igor has the skills to make IEDs, as do two of the sicarios and both Tomás and Eduardo, the security contractors.
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06-01-2019, 08:47 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
Icelander
How wedded to the idea of this shoot out are you? I can't help but think that the bad guy, if he has any intelligence, will go about the task entirely differently, and have a very high probability of success as well as doing it quietly enough that he can escape from under the noses of the police by moving at a sedate speed. Questions that need to be answered: Is Gwen, as a target, willing to cooperate or is she a hostile? If the former, life just got easier. If the latter, well, then it gets a wee bit harder, but since it is night time, it won't be impossible. Is the knowledge of the path that Gwen's transport team having to travel known with certainty, or is there the potential that the transport team might miss the ambush point? If there is a certainty to where the ambush occurs, then the Bad guy who is leading all of this can do it quietly, use the EMT's habits against them, and overcome the Police escort with little in the way of a blaze of gunfire. Can the bad guy get his hands on tasers? Can he get his hands on at least Five vehicles? If you answer yes to the questions above, the new revised plan might go like this: Three vehicles are made to plow into each other MOMENTS before the ambush. This creates an accident scene where the EMT's will happen to pass - more importantly, it will induce them to STOP. Gwen is not in a life threatening situation, while the so called staged accident will have real life people in need of help. That means the ambulance stops. The escorting police stop (assuming they were behind the ambulance in the first place). The "onlookers" start telling the cops "We saw the accident - the truck driver entered the intersection without stopping". That's when the Tasers come out... Now - take out Gwen, move her to a vehicle, and leave the accident site. Nice sedate pace, no cops killed, no gun fire, and a nicely extracted Gwen on her way to her fated destination. If you need real blood, knock an innocent out, maybe leave them in the seat unbuckled as you ram into a car yourself, and presto, one instant victim in need of medical attention. In the meantime? On the expressway, you have a car driver with his flashers on, pulled over on the side of the road as if disabled. The Bad guys get up to where he is, move the car they used initially for the extraction, leave it by the roadside and leave in the second car. Heck, they might even pour gasoline on the car behind, and torch it. Emergency vehicles like fire engines and such will race to the scene. That spetnaz guy? He could simply open fire on the firemen and their engine, their hoses, etc - and draw ALL attention to the burning car, withdraw on his own and leave quietly. Or - as I suggested earlier - simply torch the car and move on. The second car gets off nearby, goes to a parking lot, and a third car becomes the final get away vehicle. That is probably what I'd want to do in such a way as to keep it low key and successful. |
06-01-2019, 09:32 AM | #30 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)
I think you're right. A question on Raul's priorities if the mission is a failure: Is he to let Gwen be recaptured, or kill her? Or doesn't he have orders on that?
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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cops, covert ops, law enforcement, modern firepower |
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