If you didn't know, roughly a week or two ago, a disgruntled, highly decorated ex-cop in Manila decided to take a bus load of tourists as hostage. He had alleged that he had been wrongly discharged out of the force and wanted his job back.
It took 12 hours to kill this man, 12 hours and 8 dead tourists, some of who's deaths could possibly be attributed to the police rather than the Mendoza.
This story has angered on so many levels.
Not only was the assault poorly managed, anyone who's played a game of CS could have done a better job.
The first assault resulted in a retreat as Mendoza fired towards the police entering, police are expected to show courage and determination when faced with these situations, however after the first cop was wounded, instead of pushing forward to kill the hostage taker, they all retreated
(keeping in mind that this was inside a bus)
At this point, what was stopping the hostage taker killing some hostages?
The second assault which happened hours later, was even more poorly managed, a group of SWAT members assaulted the bus, first by smashing windows...and then...not much else. They did not have ladders to enter the bus after smashing the windows, nor did they have an effective plan to prevent Mendoza from killing any hostages. Footage reveal police throwing smoke grenades... into a bus full of hostages.
Again, there was nothing to stop Mendoza, who has nothing to lose at this point, killing everyone on the bus.
After revealing his position inside the bus by firing his M16, snipers were able to pick him out.
The reckless assault wasn't even required, when a sniper could have just shot this guy at any given moment in the 12 hours.
Mendoza was out in the open without his M16 raised many times during the day with negotiators, yet no attempt was made at either disarming him or killing him.
The pinoy government has defended the actions of the police at the scene, apparently the gun-man had not shown signs of wanting to kill the hostages (despite taking them all hostage with an M16).
The Chinese Central government as well as the Hong Kong SAR government has expressed their anger at the situation and has refused to host a delegation in Beijing and Hong Kong to "explain" the event, and has rejected the pinoy president's press conference explanation.
Now sure we can all say that this is the short comings of a corrupt and immature government, the people are just as fed up with this sort of incompetence.
I know you all want to be billionaires, but can you please not seek your 15 seconds of fame at a place where 8 innocent people were just murdered?
Sure a bunch of naive school girls do stupid things. I'm sure the government and the police department would condemn such behaviour, possibly even go to their school and give them a lecture...oh wait...
(theres even a picture of a policeman posing WITH a high school girl, but I can't seem to locate it.)
I hope everyone around the world can learn something from this incident ...apart from don't go to the philippines
