What would a SWAT team do if...?

Help me writing a crime novel. I'm looking for info on SWAT tactics. Not noob questions!

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Hey guys! I've been advised to descend here for answers. I'm working on a crime novel, or a techno-thriller if you wish, it fits both. The story is about a bank robbery and an ensuing hostage situation. I am pursuing a very accurate depiction of everything, including how the police would react and act.

I know a lot about police procedures and I've worked with the police for years. I'm also a gun and war history nut. So the question is not how does a SWAT team work in general. It's more like how would they react to a completely unexpected situation, and how would they act.

SWAT is a formidable thing, but they aren't almighty. There have been a few cases when they were defeated. Not as in killed, but as in couldn't achieve their goals, namely, stopping the criminals. In each and every case the opponent was well prepared for their actions and designed his own ones specifically to avoid their strong points and exploit their weaknesses. In other words, in every case something extraordinary happened. Allow me not to go into details on certain ingenious bank robberies and other cases here, but it did happen.

Now for my story. My antagonist is a bitter old hacker who builds a remote controlled robot and sends it into the bank. The robot is controlled via the cellular network. It drives like a little car, it has three cameras to give a 360 degree video feed, and it also has microphones and speakers to allow the guy to talk to his surroundings. When it enters the bank, it announces that there is a bomb inside it. He will blow it up if anyone tries to leave the bank, tries to tamper with the robot, or it will blow up automatically if it loses connection with him.

Of course the police comes, they surround the bank, but what can they do? There is nobody to arrest, shoot or outsmart. The robot has all the world's time, or at least as long as its batteries last, but that's long enough. They can't shoot at it because it may explode, or the perpetrator may blow it up. (Cont'd!)

Swat tactics 101:
Lesson 1: shoot the bad guy
Lesson 2: if they shoot back, shoot harder.
This completes your SWAT training

In this situation what would the police do? Naturally a whole lot of things will happen in the novel, and at the end it will be a duel between the robot guy and a white hat hacker. But in the meantime, the police will also take action, and there'll be SWAT.

What would a crisis negotiator do? He can go into the bank, talk to the robot, but what would he say or do? What would he promise? Crisis negotiators build all their tactics on the fact that the person they're dealing with is in a critical situation. This guy is not! All he risks is his robot. So what do you think he would say or do?

Yeah, shoot the bad guy... but there is no bad guy! There is nobody to shoot at. Just a strange machine which is a mobile, remote controlled IED.

there would likely not be major swat activity. they would focus more on how to disable the robot or track down the hacker. if they find him, infiltration

Google and general research are going to be your best friend here. Look at Tom Clancy, guy never served in the military yet has written the best military novels of all time. How? Cause he did his research

Yes, they naturally will try to track down the guy, who also anticipated this move and implemented countermeasures. This includes a SWAT raid at his suspected location which he barely avoids. But that's not what matters here.

I am doing research right now, you know. Asking around. In the meantime I'm reading SWAT tactical manuals. But they don't tell about unexpected situations. Also, I'm not here to be lectured on authoring 101, thank you.

I advise looking into some famous heists and SWAT operations. Berlin Zehlendorf 1995 was some dramatic Ocean's 11 tier shit with the SEK failing multiple times.

You wont blow it up of you shoot at it, contrary to what movies depict, shooting plastic explosives with a normal round won't do anything. The only time it would set it off is if it was a tracer round.

Most likely they would secure the bank's perimeter to make sure there is no one trying to get out or in, then send in a hostage negotiator that would talk to the guy as other parts of the police try to find the guy's location, and if they get it, raid it with SWAT.

Can you tell me the name of your book so I can buy it when it comes out?

He mentions that the hacker will blow it up

The very nature of an unexpected situation is that you don't know what could happen. If you're reading through the SWAT manuals then you should have an idea of how they are trained to react in a given situation. Anything beyond that is down to the adaptability and ingenuity of the team, done in the spur of the moment while hoping for the best outcome. Good luck with your book.

weird quality bait i would hope

the swat team actions are dictated by the aggressor or the situation, before or after they realize what they're dealing with. we're not sure what your focus is.

it sounds like you are requesting a swat larp outline of a team that realizes their conventional tactics are fucked. for how long do you want to focus on that? should they keep trying to blow it up, due to robot aggression?

like some things i have tried to write, the details get bogged down on how the characters drive the action.

>try and negociate for good mesure
>let the robot get the cash
>let the robot leave
>follow the robot (preferably via high altitude helicopter video feed)
>then either A or B
>A is following the robot until it reaches its owner, then raid/surround. If contact is about to be lost with robot because of some shenanigan, apply B
>B is awaiting for robot to be in an empty/evacuated area (such as the couple of blocs that have been evacuated around the bank), and shooting it to pieces. CSI will try and get something from the debris.

Unless SWAT is the first to arrive they would just be standing by near the bank. There is no point sending them in against a robot.
If they can evacute people from the bank a sniper might try to disable the robot.

If this is in a major metropolitan area LE is going to either shoot it with an M82 or similar until it's no longer a threat or deploy a jammer if they're in a city with a plausible terror threat and training for it (NYC, Chicago, LA).

In all seriousness, you know what would be good in this situation? A heavy armor plated box. Basically you could just drop the thing straight into the RC Car or any other bomb that SWAT might encounter, allowing it to explode without harming anyone. Although I doubt the ceiling it will fly into will come out unscathed.

Fill the room with mustard gas via air ducts to remove any leverage the robot has with hostages, then lase a 500kg bomb through the front window into the robot.

t. Spetznaz Alpha Group

t. Armchair tactician

gold medal

silver medal

There are 'bomb trucks' which police robots can drop bombs in to safely explode but it doesn't sound like that would work here. Since the bad guy has to get the money somehow I assume they'd either tag the robot or just track it and watch the money.

If the explosives inside is plastic and not shock sensitive they can destroy the whole robot in a single surprise attack before it blows, maybe.

>t. Spetznaz Alpha Group

47 hostages
1 hostage taker
61 body bags

Mission Accomplished

This. Also Hideo Kojima is just a japanese nerd, but he created a legend while selling so many hk pistols in the process.

This, they would deploy a jammer and neutralize it after that.

Your whole premise is neutralized pretty easily OP.

Though you remind me of the old SWAT 2 manual, there were some good descriptions of procedure and stories from the field in that thing. It's not comprehensive, but it gives some rundown on the basics and origins of SWAT.

Read the SWAT files at mission descriptions.

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how is hackerman supposed to get the money from the robot? police just need to clear the surrounding area and disable the bot on its way out.

how did he drive a combat robot to the bank without anyone noticing anyway?

First it will be published in Hungarian, not English. Otherwise the title - at least now - is "Human factor".

Indeed. And I thought of this. There is a small amount of ETN explosive in a glass tube attached to the exterior of the robot. When the crisis negotiator enters, he instructs her to remove it and deliver to the incident commander. ETN is highly sensitive and will blow up if a bullet strikes it.

Yes, that's what they plan at first, but the negotiator figures it out that the robot isn't going anywhere. They don't know how the money will be taken away, but it's not the robot. From this they deduce that the robot will blow up as soon as the hacker doesn't need the hostages any more. And this is a double dilemma: if they don't give him the money, the hostages die, but if they do, they still die. However there is a twist to this too - allow me not to spoil everything here. :)

In this case they (or you) haven't really understood the whole premise. If the robot loses connection, it blows up. This is exactly what a jammer would achieve. Also, they can't shoot at it because it's in the bank, among the hostages. M82? Yeah, why not a whole battalion of Paladins. Fuck the hostages.

Why wouldn't the police just give money to the robot and then follow it back to its owner? The solution seems pretty simple to me.

Indeed, but it won't happen. The hacker has something else in mind. The police also figures out that it'd be unlikely. Part of the plot.