1.The time it took the small police force and an SF team to respond to the report of shooting is now estimated at nearer 60 minutes rather than the the initial estimate of 90 minutes. The Norwegian police had only an observation helicopter available. They could not get a RNoAF troop carrier anytime soon, so they set off by road for the 45-km trip. Once there they couldn't find a boat: one they commandeered sank. They took 60-minutes to arrive after being alerted; more time was lost before they got on to the island. An off-duty policeman on the island was among those killed. No idea if off-duty police carry their service handguns. It was ill luck for the security services all through.
2.The Norwegian police and troops did not kill the gunman. They surrounded him and asked him to throw down his weapons. He complied. No doubt they read him rights, and promised to bring his pink blankie, bunny slippers, and hot cocoa to him. Again, this is Norway and its for the Norwegians to decide how to approach/handle a gunman. On this account kudos to Norway. In most other places the gunman would have been shot as soon as he was sighted.
The terrorbomb in Oslo naturally drew the focus of the entire country towards the city, every policeman available in that part of the country was then tasked with something in connection to the bomb.
So when the alarming messages of shooting on the summer camp came in, the police was faced with both a logistic dilemma, and a lack of intel.
The local police in the district around the island (another county) did respond quickly with whatever personel they had available, but upon arrival at the mainland above the island they were faced with the problem that they had no intel, and allthough they could have access to weapons (handguns and semi-auto MP5's) and protective gear like bulletproof vests and possibly helmets, they were not trained to deal with an unknown number of heavily armed terrorists.
Instead they started organizing transport, gathering intel, and taking care of the first survivors who managed to swim away from the nightmare on the island, while awaiting back-up and the arrival of a tactical policeunit, the Delta group.
As the Delta group was already deployed in Oslo, and there was no helicopters available for airlift, the obvious means of transport was by road.
It was reported that the first attempt to get accross to the island was hampered by a nearly swamped boat, and that one of the other boats had engine problems, it didn't start right away, the operation was delayed with about 9 minutes.
It's estimated that it took about 2-3 minutes from the Delta group landed on the island to the suspect was brought to surrender.
A friend of mine stated (his experiences while serving with a military unit who had some training with the Delta group) that the Delta group is extremely competent and focused.
His words: "They are machines with focus on their objective!"
Being ordered to take the shooter (at least one of them) alive, they did so, but there is no way that the shooter would have gotten away if he tried to opose them in any way.
And being arrested and manhandeled by those brutes can't be a pleasant experience.
As my friend said: "Unlike us, they are not bound by the Geneva convention..."
I suppose one reason to send in the Delta group could be that they wanted the shooter alive, nobody can tell for sure how regular policemen would have reacted upon discovering the amount of dead and wounded children piled up in the summer camp.
The policeman who was killed on the island was hired as a civilian guard, he had voluntered to organize the entrance control and the general "security" on the camp.
As this tasks was mostly to check that people who entered the island was a legitimate reason to come, looking after that the children didn't sneak away to go smoking or drinking alcohol, plus organizing fire watch, he was in plain civilian clothes and was naturaly unarmed.
Allthough it may seem soft to bystanders, I apreaciate the fact that the police, who was faced with chaos after the bomb went off in Oslo, wanted to apprehend the suspect for questioning.
There was no way to tell wether or not there was more bombs around waiting to go off, and if there was other terrorists in the area.
That's the essence of it as far as I have managed to gather from the news and other sources.