City releases audio of Pulse nightclub gunman

Police negotiators talking to the Orlando nightclub gunman at first weren't sure if the person they had on the phone was actually in the Pulse nightclub, according to audio recordings released after a judge ruled they should be made public.
The audio recordings between police negotiators and shooter Omar Mateen don't stray from transcripts of conversations released previously by the city of Orlando. But they do capture something not in the transcripts: police officials strategising among themselves about how to talk to Mateen, who hung up several times during the 3-hour standoff at the gay nightclub.
A police official can be heard early on saying he's not convinced the person on the call is in the club.

At another point, the lead police negotiator, named "Andy," said, "He sounds like he is in a very sterile environment, like he's at a home or an apartment." But then another police official said Mateen could be in an office or bathroom.
The recordings also show how the negotiators were feeling out whether they had accurately identified the suspect. "We called him Omar," said Andy, who was then interrupted by another police official who says, "He didn't deny it." Between calls, they mulled over what Mateen had told them, such as his refusal to answer if he had an accomplice.

They discussed Mateen's claims that he was wearing a vest and that he had explosives in a car outside the nightclub. He wasn't wearing a bomb vest and there were no explosives in a car, but police officials didn't know that at the time.

"He said the bombs are in a car in the parking lot. He's not confirming anything," a police official can be heard saying in the background as Andy implores Mateen to respond.
Andy then tells another police official that Mateen had claimed to be wearing a vest but he didn't know what type.
"A dress vest. A bulletproof vest, or a bomb vest. That's all I got. We questioned him on it and he shut down," the police negotiator said.

Circuit Judge Margaret Schreiber ruled yesterday that Mateen's calls should be made public. But she won't rule on releasing other 911 calls from the mass shooting until she has listened to them.
More than two dozen news groups, including The Associated Press, have been fighting the city in court over the release of more than 600 calls dealing with the worst mass shooting in modern US history. The city has released about two-thirds of the calls but are still withholding the 232 calls that lawyers for the city say depict suffering or killing and are exempt from Florida's public records laws.