( CNN ) -- Norway 's police are facing tough questions over their response to last Friday 's terror attacks , in which 76 people died . First , Oslo was rocked by a huge blast outside government buildings , which left eight people dead . Less than two hours later , a gunman reached Utoya island , some 20 miles away , and proceeded to fire on the mostly teenage participants of a political summer camp for well over an hour . Reporters , particularly from the foreign press , have asked why it took an hour from the police first being alerted for armed officers to arrest the suspect , 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik . Among their questions have been why a helicopter was not used to take elite officers to the scene , rather than them travelling by road , and whether problems with a police boat -- which meant civilian vessels had to be commandeered -- delayed the response . Some have also asked whether the response to the bombing in the Norwegian capital took priority over the Utoya alert , with emergency phone operators and resources already tied up as frantic calls started to come in from young people under fire on the island . Sissel Hammer , chief of police for the Nordre Buskerud district , which covers Utoya , told reporters Wednesday that her officers and members of an elite police unit had done their best to get to the island quickly . `` I do n't think we had any chance to be there faster than we made it , '' she said . Responding to the situation in Utoya was `` the highest priority '' for local police , and was not affected by events in Oslo , she said . Her staff had done a `` very demanding job '' both during and after the event , she added . At the same press conference , Haavard Gaasbakk , who was a commander on the scene , described how he grabbed his equipment and raced to the embarkation point for Utoya when the alarm was raised . A problem with the engine of the police boat meant the 10 or so emergency personnel who had met there had to take two privately owned motor boats instead , he said . However , these made the 700-meter crossing of the deep Tyrifjorden lake faster than the police boat would have done , he said . As they approached , the police heard `` a lot of shooting '' from the southern part of the wooded island , with gunshots `` coming fast and thick , '' Gaasbakk said . Officers ran toward the shooting and were about 350 meters away , in very difficult terrain , when they started to shout to the suspect , he said . Suddenly they saw him in front of them with his hands above his head and his weapons -- a rifle and an automatic pistol -- on the ground . The gunman was arrested by one officer as the others sought to find out of whether he was working alone and started to give first aid to a `` conveyor belt '' of the injured , Gaasbakk said . He spoke of his pride in the way police and local citizens rallied to help the injured . Hammer said an evaluation of the police response would be carried out later this year . A day earlier , police spokesman Johan Fredriksen rejected criticism of the police response to the massacre in Utoya . `` I do n't think this could have gone faster , '' he said . `` I do n't see how that would be possible with the distance and with these conditions . We always try to be better but I do n't see how we could have done this faster . '' He said the police had only one helicopter , which is kept at Gardemoen airfield north of Oslo , and that it would not have been suitable to transport a team of counter-terror officers from the capital to the scene . `` It took time to get the staff in . It was filled with irrelevant equipment for the purpose and has never been used for such operations , '' he said of the helicopter . `` I am of the opinion it would not have been any quicker to use it . '' The former police inspector for Oslo , Finn Abrahamsen , told Norwegian reporters he felt it was a pity the helicopter was on the ground on the day of the attack . Anstein Gjengedal , of Oslo police district -- which pays for the national police helicopter service from its budget -- acknowledged it was flying less hours than it used to because of budget constraints . Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg announced an independent commission of inquiry Wednesday , which he said would take an exhaustive look at what had happened and report back within a year on what lessons could be learned . But he rejected the suggestion that his country was naive and unready for potential attacks , saying Norway 's security forces were aware of the danger of violent attacks and were prepared for them . CNN 's Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report .
Some reporters question the speed of the police response . Police officials are defending their decisions . The Associated Press reports that a man who was shot in the head and killed by an officer is identified as Michael Brown, 18, from St. Louis. 68 were killed on Utoya .