FBI releases audio files from police and dispatchers in 2011 Gabby Giffords shooting

Show Caption Hide Caption FBI releases audio in 2011 Gabby Giffords shooting outside Tucson The FBI released more than 100 clips of police radio traffic from the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords at a grocery store outside Tucson.

The FBI released more than 100 clips of police radio traffic from the 2011 shooting at a grocery store outside Tucson that left six people dead and 19 wounded, including the gunman’s intended target, then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The clips depict the chaotic moments as law enforcement officers raced to secure the crime scene, corral witnesses and control the area. The longest clip runs about 45 seconds, while some are as short as two seconds.

Many contain long periods of silence where the FBI presumably redacted the conversations among emergency responders and dispatchers.

In some of the clips, dispatchers state the military time at the end of the radio call, but not in others. It's not always clear which law enforcement agency is heard.

"Just advising, Safeway, Ina and Oracle, county is going to be working a shooting," the first clip begins. It contains no time reference, but it apparently came within a minute or two of the 10:10 a.m. shooting. "We’ve got multiple, multiple, multiple, calls…uh, we’ve been informed Gabrielle Giffords is involved ... multiple parties out on the sidewalk."

At 10:17 a.m., a dispatcher radios units in the area:

"All units to the county call, a male is advising that they are restraining a male suspect in front of the store, and this may be involved with the Congresswoman Giffords function that was taking place."

Giffords had been hosting a "Congress on Your Corner" meet-and-greet with constituents outside a Safeway supermarket in Tucson when a mentally troubled man named Jared Loughner opened fire with a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol equipped with a 33-round magazine.

Six people were killed, including U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, a Giffords aide named Gabe Zimmerman and a nine-year-old girl named Christina-Taylor Green.

Thirteen people were wounded, including Giffords, a Democrat who was just starting her third term in Congress. She was shot in the head.

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Sorting out the scene

As the chaotic moments after the shooting ticked by, officers on the scene were communicating with each other and their dispatchers as they tried to get more help to the scene to search for witnesses, cordon off traffic to set up a landing zone for medical helicopters and corral the media.

"Media’s probably going to be showing up," one officer at the scene radioed to all units in the area 11 minutes after the shooting. "Keep ‘em out. We’re going to start looking for an LZ (emergency helicopter landing zone)."

A minute later, a dispatcher advises officers on the scene to look for "possibly one outstanding subject wearing a white T-shirt."

The audio files show how officers had to balance the need to investigate a major crime scene with the need to get help to the 19 victims.

Officers would later learn that Loughner was a lone gunman, but they had no way of knowing that at the time.

Loughner, who was 22, had been a student at Pima Community College in Tucson, but had been barred from campus after complaints about his increasingly bizarre behavior.

Bystanders subdued him at the scene, and he was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and forcibly medicated in federal custody. After being declared competent to stand trial in 2012, he pleaded guilty to the six murders and various other counts and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences plus 140 years in prison.

SHOOTER'S HISTORY: Records detail shooter's agitation before rampage

Clearing space for medical units

Seconds after the white T-shirt alert, one officer radioed another, telling him they needed to start staging for medical helicopters by blocking traffic in all four directions in the busy intersection.

"I need you to respond to Ina and Oracle. Shut her down, get an LZ set up," he says.

A short time later, another call goes out: "Attention units in the intersection, be advised there’s gonna be three air units, I repeat three air units, setting up to land one at a time."

"10-4 we’re ready. We’ve got it shut down," an officer replies.

A few minutes later, another call goes out from an officer at the scene:

"They have changed their plans. They’re gonna drop ‘em on Ina just east of the intersection, so make sure nothing comes through."

One deputy was told to comb the shopping center’s parking lot and direct all reporters to a central staging area. "I want you to scour the parking lot for media," he said. "Gather them all up and stage the media on the north side of the Beyond Bread," a reference to a restaurant in the center.

About an hour after the shooting, a deputy radioed that he was at Oracle and Ina roads with a witness.

"Is there anywhere they’re taking witnesses?' he is heard asking on the recording.

The deputy was told to take the witness to the vehicle that had a cone on it. “That’s the command post,” a deputy told him, “and I’ll find somebody.”

An FBI spokesman in Washington would not comment on the timing of the release.

"Per the Freedom of Information Act, 5 USC § 552, the FBI makes records requested by three or more requesters available to the public by posting on the 'Vault,' the FBI’s electronic FOIA reading room," spokesman Sutton Roach said via email, adding that additional releases are planned.

He would not say why the releases took more than eight years from the time of the shooting or why there were long gaps in some of the recordings.

"The FBI isn’t going to comment on this," he said.

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John D'Anna and Richard Ruelas are members of the Arizona Republic/azcentral.com storytelling team. Both were members of the reporting and editing team whose coverage of the Giffords shooting was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.