Lockdown

Today we locked down our building for two hours while the police and a SWAT team had a standoff with one of our residents. Nobody was killed or injured, so I promise that this story has a happy ending.

We had known that the tenant in question was mentally ill, and he’d become increasingly unstable in the past two weeks. Reports were piling up. Our staff felt threatened. We tried to file police reports, but for some reason there was never anything that they could do about him. We were becoming increasingly alarmed and wary of him, especially when we found out that he has weapons charges against him, and claimed to have a gun in his apartment.

Then this morning, he called the crisis hotline for himself. Because he made the call himself, the police and EMS responded. And because he, not our staff, phoned them we had no idea what he had said or threatened to do. But whatever it was, it must have been very serious. Our first inclination that anything was wrong came when two police officers entered our lobby with assault rifles.

Upon hearing about the incident, our security and maintenance staff sealed off that (the twelfth) floor of the building. We secured one elevator for the exclusive use of emergency personnel—the other was operated by one of our janitors, who escorted people up and down in order to make sure that no one got off on the twelfth floor. Those in their apartments on the twelfth floor couldn’t leave for those two hours.

At first, there were only those few officers upstairs, and an ambulance waited outside. But as we watched on the security cameras (they wouldn’t let social services staff anywhere near the actual apartment), more and more officers went upstairs to the scene as the first hour ticked by. I counted thirteen police officers, but I wasn’t that alarmed until a homicide detective walked in and requested an escort to the apartment.

Then, at almost the one-hour mark, the lead SWAT officer walked into the lobby and told us to secure the whole front of the building. That is, get all the tenants out of the lobby and front parking lot, and nobody other than our staff and emergency personnel were allowed to enter through the front door.

This is more difficult than it sounds, because the tenants really didn’t want to be told that they couldn’t go in and out as they pleased. It took a lot of polite (and a few not-so-polite) suggestions/commands on our part to divert people walking around to the back of the building. The other problem was that many of our frail tenants were stuck outside, unable to come in and with no place to sit down and rest. I ran in and out quite a few times, trying to get people with canes and walkers into wheelchairs or onto benches. We also had to keep all of the tenants who were inside their rooms when the incident began from leaving—by then both elevators were off limits, and so was the stairwell.

Once we made sure that the lobby was secure, the SWAT team itself went upstairs. Rifles, shields, helmets, body armor—these guys were prepared for whatever was going to come out of that apartment.

But still, nothing happened quickly. The officer who was on the phone negotiating with the tenant said that they wanted to get him out of there as quietly as possible. Whatever the tenant was telling the police, it was serious enough to warrant moving slowly.

My supervisor wasn’t here when this all started—she wasn’t feeling well and had gone to the doctor. She got the phone call to come in before she could even go get a prescription filled. When she showed up, we started calling everyone else on the twelfth floor to see if they were all right. Most of them were just annoyed because they couldn’t leave their apartments.

At some point, one of our managers came to ask me to help clear the people who had gathered around the grounds. Apparently, the cops were afraid that if the tenant was armed, he would start shooting out his window. We nudged the people as well as we could, but beyond the borders of our property, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do—we have no authority over anybody who is not a tenant. The officers took over for us.

Then, when we were waiting to go back inside the front doors, the officer at the door asked us to please not stand on the edge of the curb, just in case the tenant decided to jump out of his window.

We watched on the security cameras right into lunchtime—by then, we were tired and hungry, and most of us had to go to the bathroom. But no one wanted to leave.

At almost 1pm, they finally radioed that he was out.

I didn’t see it—I had been sent to the office to fetch a file for my supervisor. I’m told that he wasn’t wearing shoes or a shirt. His hands were bound behind him with a zip tie. Each arm was held by an officer. He was limp, like a ragdoll. Three officers followed him. They walked him out the door and put him in the back of a police car.

As the dénouement began, I was pushing our wheelchair-bound tenants back into the lobby to go up to their rooms. Walking past the police cruiser, I saw him, the tenant. He was lying on his back in the back of the cruiser. We locked eyes for a second, and then I went back to helping the other tenants.

He looked a lot more peaceful than I thought he would—maybe it was just a look of defeat. They took him to the hospital, where hopefully he’ll get the help he needs.

The SWAT team was clearing out and the cops were searching the apartment when my supervisor told me to take my lunch break.

We’re all coming down from the adrenaline, still. The rest of the day went on as normal, though I must say that I don’t remember a lot of it.

The day I interviewed for this job, my supervisor told me that I’d never experience the same day twice. I sincerely hope she’s right.

But the good news is that we all kept our heads, from the police, and SWAT team to the security officers and the social services and management staff. None of the tenants got hurt, not even the one who was at the greatest risk—the tenant in the apartment, himself. This story very well could have had an unhappy ending. Instead, we just have a really crazy story to tell.