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.
YES!!
The aerial photographs are incredibly helpful.
At one point in my life, I was in a building where a Big Politician was visiting. The Men in Black with Earpieces checked us out there.
It is stunning that the same Men did NOT have a man stationed on the building where the shooter was stationed. Maybe they did a sweep earlier, but that building should have been guarded if not stationed.
A casualty in the early day of any crisis is the truth. That said, Incompetence certainly was on display yesterday.
The anger is not a result of the event, it is the result of the fact that the assassin missed. John Brennan is mad.
Are PA’s primaries still closed? Not unusual for lefty nutters to register cross-party, to vote in opposition primaries. Would this have been his first election?
They tried to say in the beggining that Trump wasn’t actually shot, but suffered from “glass fragments” after the bullet supposedly hit a teleprompter according to their idiotic “reportingç
This was a white hat false flag. Trump has referred to Central Casting many tim s. A planned shot heard around the world
Look at that! NBC won't even acknowledge that Trump was shot, only saying that he said he was hit.
Hard to believe but the Ukrainian 79th Air Mobile Brigade is taking ‘credit’ for organizing the shooting of Trump. I guess we now know what Ukraine thinks of Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMKBznwnlw
(6:50 mark in this video)
What made think shooter think he could?
What makes a 20 year old (or anybody for that matter) think he can just climb up onto the roof of a building while carrying a difficult to conceal weapon and go undetected when that building is a mere 150 yards away from his target, his target mind you being a former POTUS and current Republican nominee for POTUS at a campaign event where it would be natural to assume that the target and nearby perimeter would be heavily guarded and secured against any type of act such as the one perpetrated yesterday.
The two women “experts” give the most pathetic excuses ever. The State Police guy isn’t much better. It’s not like this would be assassin was an engineering whiz who dropped a homemade GPS guided small missile on the stand.
Thank God you’re all right! I realized on July 5th I had forgot to tell you not to drink beer, smoke cigs, dance jigs and light fireworks off your hat.
I said other stuff but forgot to say that, so when I saw the news about that gentleman in SC I got worried. He loved the 4th of July too and had just bought a brand new Uncle Sam uniform to dance around the neighborhood in. And then you weren’t around for a few days. I was just worried sick.
Good to see you’re fine.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens defended the indefensible:
“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.”
Fire the SOB and do it now.
Twitter reporters say that he voted in midterms, but not in primaries. Of course Twitter has a lot of false information.
Trump needs to hire his own security force, loyal to him.
They make assassination sound so easy that it ought to drive hundreds to try it.
The first thing I wondered about was what happened to the the lucite panels that used to be set up around the podium when a high profile target is in the open?
Yep, they are still all in.
These cats are baaaaad news.
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.