Wright-patt shooter report created by communication chaos

DAYTON — Bedlam at Ohio’s largest single-site employer revealed a problem that local and state law-enforcement hoped was behind them: Many years and millions of dollars haven’t solved crippling communication failures among agencies.

A report examining the Aug. 2 false active shooter report at Wright-patterson Air Force Base in Dayton says radio incompatibility between the 88th Air Base Wing and local law enforcement resulted in “communication difficulties.”

The “breakdown of communication led to a completely uncoordinated and ineffective combined response that could have resulted in serious injury or property damage,” the report commissioned by base commander Col. Thomas Sherman states.

The Air Force report acknowledges a need to improve cooperation with local agencies.

“A thorough understanding between federal, state and local agencies about command and control to include understanding jurisdiction and response procedures needs to be established,” it states.

Among the problems identified in this week’s report: Local agencies rushed to the base in response to a “Signal 99” — a sign among local civilian police that an officer in distress needs help. But base officials were unaware such a call went out.

“The clue should have been when all the cops showed up at your gate,” said Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer, noting the base and local law enforcement “never really train together.”

Some local officers never made it through the gate, several local lawenforcement agencies told the Dayton Daily News. Others were waved through, but didn’t know where to check in with the incident commander. Still others assembled on base outside the hospital, the site of the chaos, where yet another cascade of errors unfolded.

“During the course of the response,” the report states, military security forces “breached a locked door by firing rounds from an M4 through the window of (a) door, causing additional 911 calls to be made from the hospital reporting a real world active shooter.”

The report states the military incident commander “quickly learned” military forces fired the round. But that action, as Plummer and others described it to the Dayton Daily News, “amped up” the assembled civilian officers.

About 50 local civilian officers “breached the locked front door of the hospital and entered with weapons drawn,” the military’s report says, despite the incident commander’s “attempt to explain the situation and otherwise stop them.”

“Everybody thought it was the real thing,” Plummer said. No one was injured.