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Police released new details Monday regarding the standoff that happened early Sunday morning, including the amount of manpower and supplies diverted to the incident.
“I think a lot of people really don’t understand the resources it takes to respond to something like that,” Rolla Police Department chief Mark Kearse said.
Gilberto Garcia, 24, of Rolla, was arrested at 6:15 a.m. Sunday after barricading himself inside a North Oak Street home.
The department spent approximately four hours outside the apartment building in the 300 block of North Oak Street Sunday morning after receiving a report of shots fired in the area.
According to Kearse, the primary resource monopolized by the standoff was manpower — including 35 RPD employees, two Rolla Fire Department employees, one Missouri S&T employee and one Phelps County Sheriff’s Department employee.
Of the 37 city employees called to the scene, approximately 30 of them were awoken by a phone call around 2 a.m. and asked to get out of bed to handle the situation.
These employees are on different pay grades, but, assuming they earn an average of $13 per hour, that means an overtime payroll of approximately $2,340 to the city.
The financial cost of the response doesn’t stop there. The city’s mobile command unit was also deployed to the scene, which takes fuel to transport and electricity to run, and then there are the tools used by police to coax the man out of the house.
Tools like a flashbang, which Kearse describes as a “light and sound device” that is thrown like a grenade.
Kearse said the department deployed at least three flashbangs through the incident, and they cost between $50 and $100 each.
Other methods used by police in their quest to contact the man who was reported to have fired gunshots outside his apartment included phone calls, an attempt to knock the door down and tear gas.
Kearse said the response was needed because officers did not know what they were facing or why the man may have fired the weapon.
Some of the possibilities officers were prepared for included a domestic disturbance, a drug deal gone bad, a suicidal individual or even a murder.
Officers now believe, because of information given to them after the alleged standoff, that the man arrested in the end, Gilberto Garcia, 24, of Rolla, was intoxicated and decided to fire the weapon as a celebratory measure.
Kearse says Garcia may not have intended to harm anyone, but that does not excuse his behavior.
“He had plenty of opportunity to surrender to us, to say ‘I’m coming out, and I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’” Kearse said.
Police released new details Monday regarding the standoff that happened early Sunday morning, including the amount of manpower and supplies diverted to the incident.
“I think a lot of people really don’t understand the resources it takes to respond to something like that,” Rolla Police Department chief Mark Kearse said.
Gilberto Garcia, 24, of Rolla, was arrested at 6:15 a.m. Sunday after barricading himself inside a North Oak Street home.
The department spent approximately four hours outside the apartment building in the 300 block of North Oak Street Sunday morning after receiving a report of shots fired in the area.
According to Kearse, the primary resource monopolized by the standoff was manpower — including 35 RPD employees, two Rolla Fire Department employees, one Missouri S&T employee and one Phelps County Sheriff’s Department employee.
Of the 37 city employees called to the scene, approximately 30 of them were awoken by a phone call around 2 a.m. and asked to get out of bed to handle the situation.
These employees are on different pay grades, but, assuming they earn an average of $13 per hour, that means an overtime payroll of approximately $2,340 to the city.
The financial cost of the response doesn’t stop there. The city’s mobile command unit was also deployed to the scene, which takes fuel to transport and electricity to run, and then there are the tools used by police to coax the man out of the house.
Tools like a flashbang, which Kearse describes as a “light and sound device” that is thrown like a grenade.
Kearse said the department deployed at least three flashbangs through the incident, and they cost between $50 and $100 each.
Other methods used by police in their quest to contact the man who was reported to have fired gunshots outside his apartment included phone calls, an attempt to knock the door down and tear gas.
Kearse said the response was needed because officers did not know what they were facing or why the man may have fired the weapon.
Some of the possibilities officers were prepared for included a domestic disturbance, a drug deal gone bad, a suicidal individual or even a murder.
Officers now believe, because of information given to them after the alleged standoff, that the man arrested in the end, Gilberto Garcia, 24, of Rolla, was intoxicated and decided to fire the weapon as a celebratory measure.
Kearse says Garcia may not have intended to harm anyone, but that does not excuse his behavior.
“He had plenty of opportunity to surrender to us, to say ‘I’m coming out, and I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’” Kearse said.
