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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Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras said it is impossible to eliminate every potential threat in a situation like Saturday’s.
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Makes it all the more important to eliminate the obvious threats: man with gun, unsecured line of sight.
LEO feels obligated to throw out the obvious b.s.
It would be VERY NICE if the media would start pointing out at least some of the calls for VIOLENCE against Trump and other Republicans, instead of focusing everything on SS, which clearly failed* at their job.
*I would hope the term “failed” accurately describes the SS in this shooting, but I’m not sure about that.
>>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 —<<
In my opinion, it was an inside job. Reminds me of the Dallas assassination of John F. Kennedy. Trump missed being killed by inches. Whoever set this up—CIA, NSA, FBI, DNC, Secret Service, they were foolish enough to have Thomas Matthew Crooks register as a Republican. How stupid do they think we are? Hopefully Trump will be elected and clean house in these dangerous alphabet agencies.
And so the gaslighting ramps up.
Oh please. There is no excuse for not securing the MOST OBVIOUS potential sniper perch with clear line of sight.
——by inches.——
I will argue “by millimeters”
The perimeter was to small. Deliberately? Thats a question of whether it was resource limited or incompetence or intensional by the team on the ground. I have little doubt higher ups withheld resources. In that case, the team on the ground does the best it can with what it has. The roof top was covered from the SS sniper position. Should it also have been physically secured? That will be a hot wash topic.
I would have expected there to be a man with a rifle on that roof, were I a spectator. A Secret Service agent. Best spot for over-watch that I see in the photos.
*There is no excuse for not securing the MOST OBVIOUS potential sniper perch with clear line of sight.*
Ya got me there.
The alleged shooter was from Bethel Park, which is a suburb of Pittsburgh. Butler is about an hour and a half to a two- hour drive north of Pittsburgh.
I’m thinking we could be waking up this morning to reports of Trump in Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh with a serious or even fatal wound. Only by the grace of God did he escape the fate of the other victims who were shot.
The Biden administration is denying protection for Robert Kennedy, Jr. What protection have they denied Trump?
If there was a guy on a roof, the Secret Service should have held Trump back before he went to speak. There is no excuse for this.
Needs to be assigned to watch Amy Carter until she retires.
There are too many facts that any reasoning person can plainly see to indicate that this was an “inside job.” Period.
In re no bs
I realize that the SS can’t prevent every attempt on a president’s life.
Say they had that roof and the nearby roofs secured. An agent on it AS IS USUAL. And that agent had quietly gone rogue and took a shot. I would not necessarily blame the SS.
That is not what happened here. They left an open roof unsecured 150 feet away from the President.
If people standing around noticed the armed man bear crawling up the roof, IT WAS NOTICEABLE. and the roof should not have been unsecured.
So obvious a set-up, even Commiecast NBC can see it.
Be ready for some communist lawmaker to introduce a ban on guns that can shoot 150 yards.
The rooftop was covered from the SS sniper position. The relevant question is how much time was the sniper aware of the assassin on the roof top, and what were his rules of engagement? The answer to these will help determine if this was incompetence or designed failure.
‘One inch from a potential civil war’
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