The Tampa Bay police chief is saying today that his police officers were ‘ambushed’ by a mob of protesters last weekend and they had to call in every officer available to deal with the situation:
Here’s more from Fox 35:
The chief of the Tampa Police Department says his officers were “ambushed” early Saturday morning.
TPD Chief Brian Dugan says officers were called to the intersection of 15th Street N and 26th Avenue E for a report of shots fired with a possible victim.
He says when officers arrived, hundreds of people had all four intersections completely blocked, and as they attempted to locate a victim, the crowd became aggressive.
As officers took one person into custody, the crowd surrounded officers and threw glass bottles, while several subjects jumped on one of the officer’s cars.
“There were hundreds of them. Hundreds. We ended up having to call every single police officer that was available that night to respond there, from New Tampa to South Tampa,” Dugan said.
He said more than 100 officers came in to help. Two were injured — one hit on the side of his head and taken to the hospital and another hit with a glass bottle on the back of the head. Both officers are expected to be fine.
As for the investigation, the chief says they are combing through dashcam footage from Saturday and arrests may be forthcoming.
The disrespect for police officers today is reaching epic proportions and something seriously needs to change.
In related news, there was a report today about a Grand Rapids police officer being ambushed and shot. Turns out it’s only partially true:
Grand Rapids police are investigating after an officer was shot at while on the job.
The incident happened at around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday while the officer with the Grand Rapids Police Department was working an investigation near Pleasant Street and Cass Avenue on the city’s southeast side.
A source told News 8 that an officer in an unmarked police car was shot at by multiple people. More than two dozen rounds were fired.
The police vehicle was hit but the officer was not injured and was able to flee the area and get to safety. The officer did not return fire, according to the source.
Police say they are not sure whether or not the assailants knew the person they were shooting at was a police officer.
GRPD is investigating and working to determine who the shooters were. Officers were in the area speaking to potential witnesses Thursday morning.
Thankfully the officer is fine, but I don’t know how he managed to not get his with over 24 shots fired into his unmarked vehicle. My guess is that the vehicle has added protection to stop bullets, because typically the passenger area of the car does not stop bullets at all. Pro-Tip: If you are ever in a gun battle outside of a vehicle, use the engine to protect yourself.
Also police don’t know yet that this was an ambush, as they don’t say the officer was called there and then shot at. It sounded like he just drove through an area and was shot at. Police are still trying to figure out if the people even realized he was an officer.