US Law Enforcement Response, Time, Scale and Coordination (Galveston, TX)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Very good.

What kind of authorization do the first responders, Galveston PD and/or Galveston County Sheriff, or any other possible LE agency that becomes involved, require to put up a police roadblock on the I-45 within the city of Galveston, in Galveston County?

Possibly a lot, but why would they do that? The normal response is that you whistle up a dozen police cars and a couple helicopters and form a moving roadblock (you can find many examples of that sort of thing; for example, I saw this pop up last week).

Originally Posted by Icelander

Of course, while by GURPS rules and even technically in real training exercises (shooting man-sized targets through car windows at 10-30 yards with red-dot sighted Bushmaster XM-15 QRC, Colt LE9620 and DPMS Panther Oracle rifles is not technically hard), the OpFor should be able to shoot 2-4 armed police from ambush and remove one girl in less than a minute of Aim, All-Out Attack, Attack and Move maneuvers (technically, probably 10-15 seconds if everyone moves like hostage rescue operators)

Nowhere near that easy. There are a series of problems:

1. Cars and vans can be controlled without exposing yourself. You can't really steer, but if you make it three blocks in a straight line, that's still plenty of distance to make a big mess of the ambusher's plans.
2. Cars and vans don't actually stop when the driver is killed.
3. Many vans have access to the driver's compartment from the back, meaning anyone in the van is potentially able to replace the driver, and in fact do so while never being visible to people outside the vehicle.
4. While reactions under fire are quite erratic, there's a high chance of the reaction being to accelerate to try and get out of the area.
5. The end result is, if you manage to stop the vehicle at all, it's likely to be hundreds of yards from where the ambush occurred, and is likely to involve a high speed crash. Which is less than optimal if you want to rescue someone alive and intact.