Posted on 07/14/2024 6:26:30 AM PDT by DoodleBob
How does a gunman, in plain view of some spectators, manage to open fire on a former president at a campaign rally protected by federal and local law enforcement?
That is the frightening and unanswered question facing the country — and security officials — after Donald Trump said he suffered a graze wound on his right ear while he was speaking in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania, and left the stage with a bloodied head.
Secret Service personnel shot and killed the gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, immediately after he opened fire, the FBI said. A spectator was killed and two additional spectators were injured, but it was not immediately clear who shot them.
The assassination attempt, in which Crooks fired multiple shots at the stage from a roof outside the venue’s security perimeter, appeared to be the result of a grave lapse, perhaps the biggest since President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded outside a Washington hotel in 1981.
Security experts said it was difficult, and perhaps impossible, to eliminate every threat, particularly with long-range weapons and outdoor events.
But some said routine precautions should have prevented the shooter from getting onto the nearby roof.
>Steve Nottingham, a former SWAT commander in Long Beach, California, called Saturday’s shooting “a fundamental security failure.”
He has worked security details for visiting world leaders, including presidents, and now trains officers on how to respond to critical incidents. He pointed at likely breakdowns in the pre-event scouting and real-time monitoring of places a gunman could shoot from.
“They were behind the curve, because they should have had those places covered ahead of time,” Nottingham said.
Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who has been on Secret Service details, said he was surprised that the shooter was able to occupy an elevated position within rifle range of the rally site.
“Whenever I’ve been with them, every single high ground is taken by them or the local SWAT police,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s nobody allowed walking on rooftops. They command the high ground.”
He said a high-powered rifle like an AR-15 can hit targets 200 yards away. Trump was about 148 yards from the rooftop where the shooter was found dead, NBC News found, based on an analysis of Google Earth images.
Cavanaugh added: “Having been on Secret Service details, it’s amazing to me that somebody was on an elevated position that they didn’t know about.”
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens defended the Secret Service at a news conference after the shooting.
“It is incredibly difficult to have a venue open to the public and to secure that against any possible threat against a very determined attacker,” Bivens said. “That’s a huge lift.”
“The investigation will really give us an opportunity to take a look at where any failures occurred and what can be done better in the future,” he added.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI is leading the investigation, including its crisis response team members and evidence response technicians, it said in a statement Saturday evening.
Last month, as the presidential campaign heated up, the Secret Service said it was increasing the size of the detail assigned to Trump. The protection was bulked up “to ensure the highest level of security for not only the event sites but the travel in between events,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said at the time.
Perhaps the first sign that something was going wrong as Trump spoke Saturday came when spectators said they noticed a man with rifle bear-crawling on a nearby roof. One recalled trying to get the attention of law enforcement.
“The police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle,’” the witness told BBC News. “And the police were like, ‘Huh, what?’ Like they didn’t know what was going on. We’re like, ‘Right here on the roof. We can see him from right here. We see him. He’s crawling.’”
A couple of minutes later, the man opened fire, the witness said.
Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office, said at a news conference that law enforcement was not aware of the man’s presence on the rooftop until he started firing.
“It is surprising,” Rojek conceded when pressed by a reporter on the number of shots the gunman managed to fire.
He referred questions about advance security precautions to the Secret Service.
In the front row of the rally, attendees heard a series of pops and saw Secret Service agents jump on the stage. One, who identified herself as Erin, told NBC News that she saw blood on Trump’s ear. She did not fear for her own safety, she said. “We were only concerned about him,” she said, referring to Trump.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social a couple of hours later that a bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” Trump wrote. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”
Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras said it is impossible to eliminate every potential threat in a situation like Saturday’s.
Outdoor rallies pose enormous security challenges given the availability of high-powered weapons, Poumpouras said.
“Somebody can be out in the distance and really engage your target from a long range, and there are weapons out there that allow you to do this,” said Poumpouras, who protected multiple presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, during her 12 years with the Secret Service.
“Let’s say you hunkered this whole area down. You’ve got the magnetometers; you’ve got the tactical element. Everything is locked and tight. How do you secure that outer perimeter? How far do you go? And can you cover everything? That’s a problem.”
She added: “Even if somebody is in an elevated position or not, how do you secure all of those elevated positions when you have weapons with the capabilities that are able to shoot long distances? This is what you are up against.”
Jillian Snider, a retired New York City police officer who was often detailed to political events, said it is routine for law enforcement to do a perimeter check extending a few hundred yards ahead of such an event.
“That doesn’t mean that someone can’t sneakily make their way to one of those positions afterward, especially if it was someone who had done some preplanning,” said Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “There are a lot of places in that area to hide, and you can’t monitor every possible position.”
“Someone who is that driven to do something like this will find a way to try and get the job done,” she added.
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
If there any drones used for coverage that is absolute proof that the SS was in on it and the personnel shortage will be just an excuse.
A Ruger Mini 14, every three months, for 25 years.
No, if the witness accounts are correct, the assassin was out of view behind the roofline (peak of roof) until he popped over, went prone, and got off 3 shots - rushed, it appears, and luckily so for Trump, not so luckily for the others hit.
The SS(?) snipers would be correctly targeting that roofline, but it’d take them a few seconds once the assassin appeared to accurately target HIM.
But then the big question is why there was no security on that roof. THAT is inexcusable.
False flag(s).
POTUS 100% INSULATED.
Expect fireworks.
JUSTICE.
I think we have gone beyond fishy into certainty. I have seen too much video to unsee it now. This was a deliberate coordinated hit job. Those SS shooters saw the perp but let him fire on Trump. The level of incompetency it would take to leave an unsecured rooftop that close to the stage is hard to accept. Its just sickening.
Bongino said the Biden appointed SS director should resign, but then Biden could appoint somebody worse. Is Cheatle more concerned with “diversity” than competence?
For clarity: “pick out 3 who likely don’t know each other, for each roof...”
I’m sure he was an angel and didn-do-nuffin.
You take an overhead photo or a diagram of where the podium will be and you place a clear overlay on it with a dot and circles around that dot showing the maximum effective range of common weapons.
Then, you make sure nobody can get a weapon inside those circles.
They basically left one flank unguarded.
If there were police on the ground there, they should have had police on that roof.
I would expect any Sergeant in the Army to know how to prepare for this.
It’s just too obvious.
You decide whether they intentionally left it unguarded.
Yup.
He said a high-powered rifle like an AR-15 can hit targets 200 yards away.The AR-15 isn't a high-powered rifle, and it can hit man-sized targets from 600 yards away, given a competent shooter.
Good post—there is no way to avoid it—at least some key SS actors (supervisors, team leaders) were in on it.
The othe question is if the police officer had a good shot to make. He may not be able to have a good shot at the guy. Everyone assumes thr officer had a good view, aim, and can make a kill immediately. It’s not like the movies. We don’t know what the officer sees.
One. You don’t want to miss and cause a panic.
Two. If the police officer misses, then the assassin just starts firing killing people.
+1
I am just a little ole lady, and even I KNOW ROOFTOPS NEARBY SHOULD BE GUARDED!
So wait until you hear shots and then shoot to kill? Was that the order?
A Remington Model 8 made in 1906 could have done the same. Semi auto rifles have been around for 118 years.
“’A fundamental security failure’: How did a gunman open fire on a Trump rally?”
not a “failure”, but deliberate ... based on all the audio and video evidence there is no way this could have happened the way it did without some kind of assistance from the secret service ... period ...
and believe me, i am not a conspiracy theorist as my posting record here would prove ... it seems like i spend half my time here debunking nonsensical conspiracy theories ... this assassination attempt is not one of those ...
That will never be known to us with any certainty. Life is like that. We receive a mixture of incomplete, sometimes incorrect, and sometimes deliberately falsified information. We must go with what we've got when the bell rings.
With the limited and distorted information that we have, I am going with "part of an intentional plan". It didn't quite work out.
But they will try again. We had best plan to stop them.
> Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras said it is impossible to eliminate every potential threat in a situation like Saturday’s.
It was ONE roof.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.