Chris Grollnek, an active-shooter prevention expert, says an independent review of the Pulse massacre is needed to ensure a credible narrative of the incident.
On June 12, Omar Mateen shot 102 people inside the LGBT nightclub, 49 of them fatally. It was the bloodiest mass shooting in American history.
After a preliminary review of the incident, Grollnek believes police leadership may have made serious errors in judgment, contributing to the chaos inside Pulse.
“I’m not saying mistakes by police leadership contributed to the heavy death toll at Pulse, but I also can’t rule out that possibility,” Grollnek told PGN.
Grollnek is a nationally recognized expert on active-shooter tactics, and a retired police officer and SWAT Team member based in McKinney, Texas.
He said an after-action report, known as an AAR, typically is issued after a mass-shooting event.
An outside agency with no vested interest in the outcome should issue the Pulse after-action report, Grollnek said.
“And I hope they don’t refer this task to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,” he added. “I’d like to see a more independent agency conduct the review.”
Grollnek, 46, questioned a narrative of the Pulse incident provided by the Orlando Police Department.
According to the department, Mateen’s shooting spree ended by 2:12 a.m. June 12, when he retreated to a Pulse restroom area and held hostages.
Police said they used the next three hours to implement a rescue plan, which included breaching a restroom wall at 5:14 a.m., thus limiting additional casualties.
But Grollnek said computer-aided dispatch records from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office indicate Mateen continued shooting until 2:34 a.m.
Grollnek also questioned why Mateen was able to retreat to the restroom area, where he apparently shot more people.
Additionally, Grollnek noted that Orlando Police Chief John W. Mina publicly disputed a survivor’s account that Mateen shot three people shortly before police breached a restroom wall.
Grollnek said Mina’s refusal to accept the survivor’s account underscores the need for an impartial review.
“The public has a right to know what went right and what went wrong during the Pulse incident,” he said. “If major leadership errors were made, this will be used as a textbook picture of what not to do in a critical incident and management of same.”
Grollnek emphasized that he wasn’t faulting the actions of responding officers and SWAT members.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for the responding officers and SWAT team. They tried to do their job and stop the incident. But for reasons not yet clear, police leadership may have prevented them from doing their job promptly.”
In an email, the Orlando police department provided this version of events:
“[A]t 2:08 a.m, OPD made entrance to the nightclub and from 2:12 a.m. on, OPD officers were in position to prevent the shooter from moving throughout Pulse, changing from an active shooter scenario to a hostage situation. The last shots fired were at 2:18 a.m. We know the shots fired at 2:18 a.m. were from an OPD officer aimed at the shooter. At 5:14 a.m., when the SWAT rescue took place, additional shots were fired.
“Police and Fire [computer-aided dispatch] reports provide additional information as to what occurred between 2:18 a.m. and 5:14 a.m. During this time, police were constantly helping victims out of the building, bringing them to medical aid being provided by either the fire department or the hospital. Within the first hour, there were reports that explosives existed. Despite this threat, OPD officers continued to rescue people from the building.
“Once the SWAT team breached the wall of Pulse, 30 additional people were rescued from the area where the gunman had been holding hostages. We have said all along that our officers acted heroically — from the moment the first shots were fired, through the rescue of many club-goers during the hostage situation, to the time that the shooter was killed by OPD gunfire. But the [computer-aided dispatch] narrative also shows that many people inside the club, and their friends and family members who were relaying phone calls and text messages to 911 operators, also acted extremely heroically in a time of great crisis. Officers could not have acted so effectively without the information coming from inside the club.”
