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.
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Video with sound recordings clearly show that was the case. And the SWAT team appeared to have the assassin in their scopes before shots were fired. I believe the counter-snipers were from the local SWAT team and not Secret Service.
I do not see any good explanation for this, unless one of the "facts" is wrong.
What did the CS team see and when did they see it? What were their rules of engagement? Did they get an alert from their commanders before the shots were fired?
Witnesses were screaming to authorities for a good three minutes about a man with a rifle on the roof. They even videoed the whole event. What happened to those warnings? And what happened to those videos? They were posted on Twitter. They showed the assassin firing and being killed by return fire.
Where were the drones?
FBI has no details at this time. Just said the secret service is not available for a press conference at this time.
Everything happened very fast, but I think you are correct.
No, you wait until you can actually see the shooter above the roofline (or someone shouts a bogey has done so), get him in the sight (in the one vid you can see the sniper raise his head and reposition his rifle to do so), get the crosshairs on the shooter, and fire.) Oh, yeah, in the process ascertaining the figure you see is not a fellow LEO somehow in the wrong place (except that there SHOULD have been an LEO or two up there) and what the hell that figure is doing.
The real question here is why wasn’t the back side of that roof secured. That is inexcusable.
WORSE than inexusable to the point of deliberate.
Yesterday, I watched this guy tell about how he and other people saw an armed man crawl on the roof with a rifle, and
law enforcement people listened to them and did nothing.
Below this, is the BBC story covering the shootings and what
he and others tried to tell the enforcement people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c51yly4085lo
Jason Bourne, Operation Treadstone. CIA created zombie assassins.
According to James Okeefe he has received video from drone footage showing the guy on the roof. Their drone. They knew he was there. THEY KNEW. They knew he was on that roof. They should have started suppressive fire at the roofline Ping, ping, ping to keep his head down and told the SS team to get Trump off the stage. This isn’t rocket science. The whole thing is beyond belief.
Here’s your three choices
Those guys are worthless
Those guys are poorly trained
Those guys were told not to shoot
I’m going with door #3
Yesterday, I watched this guy tell about how he and other people saw an armed man crawl on the roof with a rifle, and
law enforcement people listened to them and did nothing.
Below this, is the BBC story covering the shootings and what
he and others tried to tell the enforcement people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c51yly4085lo
Somewhere very likely a new assasin is being groomed.
You got that one right!
A Google earth 3d search of the buildings at ARG International do not appear to show any fixed exterior ladders for roof access. There also do not appear to be any roof access hatches on any of the facility roofs. How did he get on the roof...~ fifteen feet high?
I’m using my phone, so by resolution may be poor.
Brought a ladder?
Had one prestaged?
The perimeter was deliberately too tiny.>>>> The perimeter included the donut shop. That’s about all.
speaking of idiotic statements:
“after Donald Trump said he suffered a graze wound on his right ear”
in other words, we have only trump’s word that he was wounded [and we all know that trump is a liar]
CNN is now reporting that explosives were found in the shooter’s vehicle and residence.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-biden-trump-07-13-24/index.html
If the security drone was in the air that is proof the SS managers were in on it.
an yet another of a plethora of idiotic statements:
“Crooks fired multiple shots at the stage from a roof outside the venue’s security perimeter”
no, you dumbfcks, he did not shoot outside the SECURITY perimeter, he shot outside the venue perimeter ... the SECURITY perimeter is vastly larger than the venue perimeter ...
And to boot the roof had a clear sightline to the evac route.
They got the headline right! Where was the agent who should have been posted on the rooftop?
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