We were called down to the waterfront, where we usually launch our boat, for a person with a gun. We staged about a block away from the location they gave us and tuned into the police radio frequency to listen in. An off duty officer had spotted this guy sitting on the rocks by the water with a pistol. Turns out that where I parked the rig (facing a T-intersection) was dead ahead of where the guy was sitting on the other side of the water. I busted out the binoculars and got a good view of him. He was sitting down and not doing much of anything, at least from my view. The police had a fixed wing in the air with a high powered camera on the guy and they could see that he also had a knife and was cutting at his arms and bleeding.
It took a while to discreetly evacuate the park next to where he was sitting and call in the police rapid response team. That's when it got exciting. An armored vehicle (BearCat), K-9 unit, and SWAT team arrived. Suddenly there were armed men belly crawling over grassy knolls and taking up sniper positions.
We heard over the police band that they were calling for a PD boat from a neighboring jurisdiction to come to the Marina in case he went into the water. There was no way we were going to have another agency pull someone out of the water in our Marina so we called for our boat which was literally just down the street. They were suited up and in launch position in no time.
We got a report that this was a missing, at risk, young man who had posted a farewell/apology on facebook and was known to carry a BB gun. The police action was in full swing and we moved our rig down to the command post, closer to where we could move in to help if someone got hurt. Now that the park was clear, the BearCat and the K-9 unit started moving in. The suspect started shuffling down the path towards them shifting the gun from one hand to the other and in and out of his pocket. We were standing in a parking lot watching through the binocs as this all went down. From behind the BearCat they told him to drop the gun. I couldn't tell exactly what happened next but I saw him stagger back a couple of steps, flinch a couple of times, double over and then stand still. They had shot him a few times with plastic projectiles (picture a solid nerf dart shot from a real shotgun).
They ordered him to remove his jacket and lay down which he did. He was then cuffed and we were called in with the ambulance.
When we went to bandage him up, I expected to see some superficial, 'cry for help' type cuts on his arm (which there were) but he had also done a legit job of slashing his wrist. That is, he cut deep and he cut up his arm, not across his wrist. That explains why he was shuffling, he had probably lost a decent amount of blood. He also had some damn good welts from the non-lethal bullets they shot him with. All in all the whole thing took about three hours and was pretty damn interesting to watch.
One of the most interesting things to come out of it, though, was what I learned later. The K-9 officer is a friend and he comes by our station frequently with his dog. The next day we asked him a practical question, "If you get hurt or shot on a call and we have to help you, will the dog let us?" The answer was, of course, "No." The dog will most likely be very protective and won't respond to commands. If the officer can talk he might be able to get the dog to obey, otherwise, this is what he said we should do: Go to his patrol car and grab the leash, then pop the trunk and grab the 'sleeve'. One person holds the leash and gets ready to clip into the dogs collar. The other person puts on the sleeve and gets attacked by the dog!!!
