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[The snipers knew he was on the roof for around 20 minutes and let him take the first shot. This was criminal negligence more than some F’ing brilliant POS kid.]

They saw a kid with binoculars, belatedly identified as a rangefinder. In an exurb, probably as common as hen’s teeth. They’re used in golf, hunting and can, in a pinch, work as binoculars. The kid shouldered the gun at the last minute or so.

Note that whatever optics the cops are using, it’s like looking through a straw. They have to pan over other possible spectators or shooters looking at the rally through binoculars, some of whom may be concealed behind a hide, a curtain or a window as Lee Harvey Oswald was.

In retrospect, Crooks was the only game in town, as far as assassins go. At that moment, they had no clue he was the sum total of the threats they faced. And what if Crooks was a decoy, the unarmed civilian leg of a two- or however many-strong crew deployed to draw the cops away from the actual shooters? Or just the wrong man at the wrong time, as the Atlanta Olympics security guard was, when he found the homemade bomb? Things that are clear to the cops now weren’t until Crooks fired the first shot. Then the Secret Service marksman quickly focused on where he had last seen him, unarmed, and took him out.