SWAT Standoff In East Austin Ends Peacefully [UPDATED]

EAST AUSTIN, TX — A standoff with a barricaded subject in East Austin that began for undetermined reasons — complete with SWAT teams armed with tactical equipment — ended peacefully Friday afternoon after prompting police to close off an area near Rosewood and Chicon streets.

Destiny Winston, a police spokeswoman, said officers were called to the 11400 block of Chicon at about 9:36 a.m. after a subject refused to exit a home. Winston didn't indicate why the subject was sought by police, other than saying their presence was sparked by a "check welfare" call. "The details are still under investigation," is all she offered to reporters.

While the reason for the SWAT response was s unknown, the incident ended peacefully by around 1:30 p.m. when the barricaded person exited an apartment. Still, police urged residents to avoid the area while trying to coax the person from exiting the unit.

After a couple of hours, however, the standoff ended peacefully: "But with the assistance of SWAT, the subject was able to exit he location peacefully, and without incident," Winston said.

Often, Austin police send in the full array of tactical gear and equipment — armored vehicles, bomb-retrieving robotic devices and the like — in response to a suspect not responding to arriving police. Winston briefly addressed the purpose of rolling out such heavy equipment by SWAT teams in situations as seemingly mundane as a person not answering a knock at the door:

"Do keep in mind that SWAT does utilize distraction devices to help bring an incident to a peaceful and quiet resolution," she said.

But Winston declined to provide further details as to the equipment used: "I'm not going to get into the tactics that they use or when they use them because the officers need to maintain a tactical advantage in order to ensure officer safety. But the end goal, and the end result, was that the incident ended peacefully without any injury to anyone."

Such SWAT-heavy responses are commonplace in Austin, a tactic often used by police when a subject refuses to open the door upon their arrival. Invariably, people living in those neighborhoods are asked to stay in place during such incidents, yielding an inability to leave the surroundings while police coax a person out of a dwelling.

In February of last year, Patch got a close-up look at typical SWAT response in another welfare check at the Blunn Creek Apartments at 701 Woodward St., just across from the St. Edwards University campus. Shortly before 7 a.m., an impressive show of police force blocked the entire length of Woodward to traffic as they urged a subject through the use of a megaphone to exit his apartment. During that three-hour standoff, residents at a neighboring apartment complex were told to stay in place, several residents unable to get to their jobs during the standoff.

Lining the street were all manner of emergency vehicles — several police cars, armored units, a command truck, a firetruck, motorcycles — and seen darting across the lawn was a bomb-retrieving robot and a police canine. After a couple of hours of asking the subject to exit and alerting him that he was surrounded by police, some officers were overheard trying to secure a Spanish-speaking officer to take over the blared-out commands to the barricaded subject not in English, but in Spanish.

Patch asked at the time if perhaps the subject hadn't understood their commands, but the officer briefing reporters couldn't provide an answer. In the end, the person in that incident ultimately exited the apartment, and the situation ended peacefully as well.

Patch will provide further details as to the nature of the call on Friday as details are released. "Just keep in mind it's early on, so as we get more information we'll provide it," Winston said.

>>> Photos by Tony Cantu, above photo from February 2016 SWAT call at 701 Woodward St.