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el gato malo's avatar

but if SS just thought people were wrongly identifying a local LEO as a threat, they may have just thought the crowd was wrong.

pulling a candidate off a stage is a major media event and your job is over if you get it wrong.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

"Crooks came back, sat down and looked at his phone. At that point, one of the snipers took a picture of him. Crooks took out a rangefinder and the sniper radioed to the command post. Crooks disappeared again and then came back a 3RD TIME with a backpack. The snipers called in with the information that he had a backpack and said he was walking towards the back of the building"

- CBS

This is galactic ineptitude.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

This seems to refute the fact that they were just a bunch individuals passing each other like ships in the night

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JuQu's avatar

Would their jobs have been over if Trump had been more seriously injured or killed? Someone’s life is over because of this. Jobs are over because of media events mistakes but not deaths and injuries? Something very wrong here.

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Yetimonster's avatar

Seriously. It's like a perfect example of one of the many things that are wrong in our country - appearance being so much more important than substance and intent. Heartbreaking.

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suannee's avatar

You're right. Nuclear weapons lab security, TSA security, Homeland Security - all form over content.

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Stephenie's avatar

oh gawd TSA. when will that circus pack up and go home?

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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

They had at least two minutes to figure it out. That seems more than enough time to make a determination, if comms are working, and how can't that be working?. That does not imply malice, but then malice absolutely describes the attitude of media and the deep state about Trump and MAGA.

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Integrity and Karma's avatar

Absolutely this. When the safety of your potential next president is clearly WtF?d... you pull him back, verify, and look sheepish if you must.

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AndyinBC's avatar

That's what competent people might do.

Which apparently excludes a significant percentage of ALL government employees.

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Integrity and Karma's avatar

Why do you have to be so dang logical, Andy??

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AndyinBC's avatar

Raised on a ranch. Thirty miles from the nearest paved highway. And a lot further from town. We got electricity when I was seven. And running water when I was 12. Didn't see a TV until I went to high school. Didn't think much of it then. And even less now.

But our house was full of books - so after chores...

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Integrity and Karma's avatar

🥰🥰🥰

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Pi Guy's avatar

"house was full of books"

This explains much, Andy.

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Guy Montag, E-451's avatar

“According to the AP, who spoke to two law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of the roof of the nearby building and warned local law enforcement. This is when one local officer climbed to the roof and confronted Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder [?] as Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump...” https://www.newsweek.com/police-officer-found-trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-roof-minutes-before-shooting-report-1925027

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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

We can't scapegoat that one officer. Local law enforcement one would hope, would have a direct comm to SS. Spotters would have been able to see if he had a gun. But none of that seems to have happened. That, and the fact that the roof was unsecure, makes it seem to me like gross incompetence caused by systemic malice.

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Ted's avatar

There has been a massive coordination of communications from top to bottom for decades. That goes back to Columbine in 1999 when local police departments around suburban Denver couldn't talk to each other. Now 25 years later it is exceedingly rare not to have mutual aid communication at the local, county and state level and dovetailing that with federal directly or via dispatcher is not a far fetched concept. Not just LEO but fire rescue and aviation. The nation has spent many billions of dollars with contractors such as Motorola to develop this infrastructure. I'd be highly suspicious to hear elements of a detail such as this took more than a few seconds for information to be passed from the individual sheriff's deputy to the USSS incident commander. If the communication system was compromised and not functioning that alone would should be a reason to implement a procedure to figure out why and protect people. If nothing else, never mind the president and USSS responsibility, the local and state police should have done something to watch out for their citizens in the crowd. If this was a concert or county fair and some nut climbed up on a roof with a rifle wouldn't the police swarm to stop it? When detailed to a federal event do they no longer have a responsibility to their primary job? Maybe they only swarm like that when it's lucrative and a civil forfeiture is afoot.

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Donna O's avatar

Reports that the snipers were told TWICE not to shoot, and the shooter was in a BlackRock ad 2 years before. (Again, I believe Feds keep a list of crazies who can be rallied at just the right time to do their dirty work.) I could believe stupidity if all the other “stupid” take outs hadn’t happened. The left was frothing at the mouth to get Trump incarcerated so he could be “Epsteined”. When that failed, a new plan was hastily put together. Telling sign was how quickly FBI was on site and how quickly investigation was over with no answers. Someone will lose their job and no one pays for the death of one and injury of two others. Business as usual.

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ViaVeritasVita's avatar

Bet no job loss at all. Just keep your mouth shut and you can keep your job.

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Quadriped's avatar

Trump's life is over if you mess it up!

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BubblePuppy7's avatar

Yep. As another poster observed: “One more inch and Trump would be voting for Biden.”

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Lmao!

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VeryVer's avatar

and if the underlying feeling is that "MAGA people are all idiots" anyway....it would take even longer for the reality of the situation to fight it's way into their heads....

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CecilRhodes's avatar

I've never been in a building with a quiet metal roof, but I have been in one with someone climbing around on top. It's not subtile. I'd be willing to bet the metal roof is not in any way insulated but I suppose the LEO's just thought there was a big racoon up there.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

THIS is such a great point. I used to be a roofing grunt to make money during the summers for 6 years to pay for college.

I can't believe I didn't think of this. That roof looks like corrugated metal clapboard.

No way you can't hear if someone is on the roof and you're in the building.

Excellent post.

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carily myers's avatar

agree. Why do you think people w/ metal roofs like the rain at night?

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Pi Guy's avatar

Soooo... you're saying they had a clean shot?

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koen swinkels's avatar

How often does it happen that a crowd starts to yell that there is a man with a gun crawling on the roof? Like, does the Secret Service have to deal with such overexcited amateur crowds at just about every rally, or a few times a month, or less than that? Like, how blasé can they reasonably be expected to be about such crowd behavior?

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Ben Kurtz's avatar

"Your job is over if you [pull the candidate off-stage over a false positive]" is clearly the wrong rule - are you sure it's really like that?

Creating an artificial knife's edge is terrible management. If the priority is to keep the principal safe, then you need to be allowed to err a bit on the side of caution. It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but what really is the harm if Trump is held backstage an extra 10 minutes while security re-sweeps a roof after a suspicious report, or is even quietly interrupted by a couple of agents mid-speech and comes back out after 10 minutes to finish his event? Surely much less than his getting shot.

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sabu012's avatar

Well their jobs are certainly over now then.

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toolate's avatar

why would a local law enforcement be dressed like that? Were others undercover? Would a roof top sniper go under cover? Unlikey

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kirked's avatar

Is your job over if your protectee is assassinated?

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