San Diego Lockdown (June 23-24)
On June 23rd, 2018 officers attempted to serve a drug warrant in a San Diego apartment building and were met with automatic weapons fire, sending two police officers to the hospital with serious gunshot wounds and starting a siege that resulted in the virtual lockdown of an entire section of San Diego. After two hours the police decided to deploy a military weapon, a type of 40mm grenade which is not legal to use on civilians on American soil.
After getting an alert that thousands of people were listening, I monitored the situation via digital scanner repeater on the San Diego unified Talkgroup for many hours: several officers tried to talk one member of the tactical team and the CO of almost 2700 more personnel out of this illegal act and after having disparaging things said about their genitalia by the woman in command, they were denounced and one threatened to resign. You will hear this in recordings of the radio conversation, and also that they deployed Picatinny XM1060 Thermobaric 40mm grenades through an already open door with no threat inside, which is confirmed because a dog was sent in and did not attack nor run out of the residence. The alleged perpetrator was observed to be bleeding from the head area, lying prone and moving.
Other San Diego PD Officers, National Guard and DHS agents expressed concerns about ignitable material in the building and on the street, as well as incomplete evac of the building and potential highly dangerous unknowns.
The alleged perpetrator of the shooting of the officers had been completely quiet for at least 1 hour.
They deployed at least one XM1060 which are illegal to use on civilians, highly dangerous to use outside of the war theatre and this person was not considered a domestic terrorist. The officers were executing drug warrants.
There was no followup mentioning any of this in the subsequent weeks and months. The injured officers survived, and the alleged shooter was dead, although no cause of death was released to the media.
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(Technical notes)
The XM1060 40mm grenade is a thermobaric weapon which utilizes a thermite variant which burns in excess of 3000 degrees F. It ignites flammable material, detonates explosives and fuels and uses up all the air in the vicinity because thermite variants do not need a special oxidizer. The yield on thermobarics (Daisy Cutter, Fuel Air Explosives, XM1060 rounds) is extremely high for the mass of the charge because it is nearly all utilized
The XM1060 by Picatinny Arsenal is designed to be retroactively usable in the M79, all the newer low/high pressure grenade launchers and even the Sage 37mm which is in widespread deployment in SWAT and other specialized police units.