Trump Shot on Campaign.

Maybe the stairs were too narrow for the group to easily walk down?

I grew up in England, no one walks anywhere barefoot, I thought going barefoot was awesome after we moved to Texas.
My point here is, it’s possible Trump grew up in an environment that going barefoot was frowned upon and it was just instinct to want his shoes. Maybe because this is what he’s done for 70+ years?

“B” team, absolutely. As said, he’s a candidate (and former President which changes things a little) not the President.

He STILL should NOT have been allowed on the stage until reports, much earlier, concerning a man on a roof had been investigated.
 
JohnKSa said:
I was not impressed with how hard it seemed to be for them to go down the steps from the stage. Almost like they had never practiced anything like that before.
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My guess is that nobody ever considered that those stairs might have to be used for a rapid evac of a Presidential security scrum. If I were a betting man, I'd place a small wager that in the future the stairs leading off stages for major politicians in the future will be a lot wider, and have smaller risers and wider treads.
 
I was not impressed with how hard it seemed to be for them to go down the steps from the stage. Almost like they had never practiced anything like that before.
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That is because they had not. Egress was off the left side (from the podium) of the stage. There were two sets of stairs and two sets of railings and the stairs were separated by a couple of feet. The stairs were your typical typical, functional, but fairly small stage stairs about 4 ft wide, enough for two people to go up or down together. The stairs were not wide enough for a protecting detail of 8-10 to go down while surrounding the principal. As a result, they got to the stairs and hung up for a couple of reasons. 1), they went against orders and let the principal control the situation during a critical time instead of getting him to safety, and 2) they could not all fit on the stairs. As such, the less than great coverage of Trump broke down further as at least 3 from the detail peeled off from the group and had to leap from the stage and Trump and the others squeezed down from a circle of coverage to being just 2 people wide.. That severely compromised the human shield barrier around Trump. It was a physical funnel situation and there was just no way all would fit. There is video of this from both the front and the back and it is stupid comical the incompetence they had with coverage going down the stairs that the advance team should never have allowed to be in place as separate units. It would have worked if both sets of stairs were placed together with no central rails, but that isn't what they had.

Had they practiced this only once, they would have known.

At 6:47 in the video, you can see the opposite side stairs that mirror the exit side in size, except Trump has a raised ramp for the stage approach. Notice that Trump is able to easily grasp the rail on both sides as he goes up and then watch the whole detail try to get him off the opposite side down one of those same sets of stair and they just don't even fit, not even then they use a % of undersized SS agents. (19:40, 20:40, 21:51, 22:24, 22:56).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O696aD_ssIk
 
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44 AMP said:
They say hindsight is 20/20, meaning clear vision, and this is true, in a way. Looking BACK with the benefit of knowing what happened, what was important, because of that, being able to see what was missed before, clearly and obviously makes it seem that important things were missed.

Its obvious TODAY, but a week+ ago, before the event happed, how "obvious" was it, really.

Farm show (fairgrounds??) "The shooter checked out the grounds days beforehand..." technically true, but means WHAT? EVERYONE who visited the fairgrounds in the days before the rally was "checking out the location" and that's what, hundreds, or thousands of people???

Think security is going to be able to spot, and single out a lone person, someone 20 years old, with no criminal record, someone who is (at the time) a completely law abiding citizen, and unknown to the authorities?

I think you're expecting too much.

"He flew a drone over the site before the attack.." ok, they found a drone in his car. And going by the news I just looked up, a "friend" of the shooter told the police Crooks had flown it over the site. Police spokesman said they didn't know when he did it, could have been hours or days before the shooting.

Seems a bit confusing to me that the "lone gunman" who "didn't have any friends and was bullied in school" etc, NOW has "friends who are talking to the cops, telling them what the shooter did before the attack....

Another point, say you're there, and spot someone climbing up to a roof. How do you know he's not supposed to be there, or do that? Maybe he's an IT guy going to check a cable connection. Maybe he's a photographer who wants a better angle. Maybe, (If you see the rifle) he's part of the security counter sniper teams, or maybe he's an assassin. You don't know.

You've got..maybe 30 seconds to decide, and maybe a minute to find a security person (cop, etc, who may be a few hundred feet from where you are in the crowd), tell them what you saw, get them take you seriously, and get an alert out. NOT much time, at all.

Nearly all of the outcry about "why didn't they stop him" is thoughtless emotional response by people who don't understand the complexities involved, and who are looking at ALL the details AFTER THE FACT, so that they NOW know which ones are important.
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I think a trained security, first off would have sealed and secured the area. I think that same security would have known who was allowed to be on that roof. But that was not my point, that kid made enough moves to get caught that a semi-professional would not have made. It was just a random thought if the kid wanted to get caught before he carried out his act. And by thought I mean I have zero proof of that.
 
I think there's a lot of middle ground between how long it took them from the time they stood him up until they got him to the car and breaking three ribs rushing things.
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Sure there is, and their should be. The very fastest way to physically get Trump off the stage would have been to carry/drag/throw him, and while Trump may not be as fragile as a basket of eggs, he's not as "robust" as a bag of soccer balls either.

You've got training, but some of the real world conditions weren't covered in your training. You're under tremendous stress, you have to identify just what is going on, decide what to do, and then do it, in not even a handful of seconds.

Due to modern tech I think this incident has more video to study than any previous thing, and every second of it is being scrutinized and analyzed by "experts" (actual and self designated) who have all the time you don't have to determine where/when you made "mistakes".

Consider that things that are "obvious" in the video (that a reviewer has watched 60 times in 3 hours and often in slow motion) might not occur to the people actually doing it, doing it for the first time for real, and doing it in less than a dozen seconds.

There is ALWAYS SOMETHING that could have been done better, and no shortage of armchair experts willing and eager to point out where and what they are.

They did their job. Doesn't matter there were what some consider flaws or errors, what they did, worked. I say its past time to stop beating this particular horse, don't you?
 
44 AMP said:
Another point, say you're there, and spot someone climbing up to a roof. How do you know he's not supposed to be there, or do that? Maybe he's an IT guy going to check a cable connection. Maybe he's a photographer who wants a better angle. Maybe, (If you see the rifle) he's part of the security counter sniper teams, or maybe he's an assassin. You don't know.

You've got..maybe 30 seconds to decide, and maybe a minute to find a security person (cop, etc, who may be a few hundred feet from where you are in the crowd), tell them what you saw, get them take you seriously, and get an alert out. NOT much time, at all.
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I have to disagree on this. If this was downtown Metropolis on an ordinary Saturday, and some guy ran up to a cop walking his normal beat on patrol, then I could see some delay due to the cop having to figure out who he's talking to and whether the report/complaint makes any sense and might be worth following up on.

But this was NOT downtown Metropolis on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, and this was not a cop on a routine patrol. This was a major campaign event by a former President and current presidential candidate, and every cop at the site was there for the primary purpose of ensure the safety of Donald Trump. There were cops basically everywhere (except, of course, on the AGR roof and the water tower, where they should have been). There was no delay notifying "the police" that there was someone on the roof with a rifle. The delays were in the police doing anything about the reports.
 
Originally Posted by 44 AMP
Another point, say you're there, and spot someone climbing up to a roof. ....
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Sorry, I probably should have stated more clearly, the point I was making here was the point of view of someone attending the event. NOT a police or security professional.

This is not the same as someone walking up to a cop and the cop having to take the time to figure out what to do. This is meant to represent any random person in the crowd, who spots something "suspicious", what they have to do about it and the time it must take for them to decide, and act, and also the time needed for the authorities to accept the information as valid, and act on that.

There is ALWAYS a time factor involved, and it is different between ordinary people and trained professionals.
 
The MAJOR time factor was Crooks being reported on the building 20 minutes before he fired his first shot. Had Trump been delayed, more than likely 1 death and 3 injuries would not have occurred, period.
 
The MAJOR time factor was Crooks being reported on the building 20 minutes before he fired his first shot.
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Reported by whom, to whom??

and, I'm not trying to be sarcastic, just curious, because there is ALWAYS some amount of time lag, vital time lost in getting reports verified and passed up and down the chain of command.

If you're going to tear things down to moment by moment, details matter a lot.

Was it 20 minutes from the time someone in the crowd told a cop there was someone on the roof? Or 20 minutes between the SS being informed there was someone ARMED on the roof and when they acted??

I don't know, but if you're making the claim, please provide the details you are basing the claim on.

These details are important. Each step of the chain must be clearly identified and the actions of the person in it, and the amount of time each part took. Only by doing that can it be identified if the system was flawed, or if things failed because of the actions/inaction of specific individuals.

Commanders will frequently not immediately act on "unconfirmed" reports, or reports coming from outside their chain of command. Was this the case??

History is full of significant and history altering events that were entirely the result of what one single person did, or didn't do, soon enough.
and, generally speaking who is responsible isn't known until after bad things have happened and everything is analyzed in detail.

Did security screw up? Obviously, because a shooter got into position and fired, and they didn't prevent that from happening.

The rightness or wrongness of a person's actions must be judged taking into account what they knew at the time, not what is known after the fact. Again, history is full of examples of people who did the right thing, based on what they knew at the time, but which turned out to be the wrong thing when more information is known, later.

Sure, the people who let Trump walk out onto the stage and begin his speech shouldn't have let it happen, IF they had known about the possibility of a sniper. Did they? Did they have any idea at all? Or did they have an unconfirmed report? Did they get the info AFTER Trump was on stage??

Again, these details matter. And I believe those things won't be known until the various groups investigating things finish their investigations.
 
If those are the correct findings the SS appears to have responded inappropriately to the warnings given by the snipers.
 
or at least inappropriately slowly..... :rolleyes:

Given the preliminary findings in the linked article, it appears that the insular nature of the various agencies involved, local, state and Federal once again prevented efficient and timely communications and transmission of vital information to all parties.

Seems that the state and local groups operated under a single overall command structure, but the Feds were not directly part of that.

Everyone operating on different radio frequencies was only one aspect of the problem.
 
I watched a follow up video by the local emergency response team--including roof top views of the aftermath of the shooting with the Crooks body and the weapon. Interesting how the weapon was way off to the side from the body--not sure if that was a death throe toss or LE moving it to be sure there was no possible grab. It sounds like there is a bit of a timeline blame-game between the local team and the SS as to who is mostly responsible for the failure to stop Crooks given the advance notice. Probably plenty of blame to go around for everyone--but that's easy to say as an arm-chair analyst.
 
A month from now we may even have the privilege of more reliable information.

But I wouldn’t bet on it!

More than likely this will disappear like the little bag of parmigiana cheese found in the White House.
 
I watched a follow up video by the local emergency response team--including roof top views of the aftermath of the shooting with the Crooks body and the weapon.
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The earliest released footage I saw of the roof was from a circling helicopter. It showed the rifle in the position you describe; east of, but not immediately adjacent to the body. It also showed a backpack on the roof near the connector between the buildings, and a ladder placed against the connector.

We are now told that particular ladder was NOT placed by the shooter which suggests that by the time that footage was shown, LE had already accessed the roof. I suspect that you are correct; the first person who got to the body moved the rifle away from the shooter.
Probably plenty of blame to go around for everyone...
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John's rule of distributed blame: "There's always more than enough blame to go around--even after everyone has gotten their fair share there will still be some left over."
 
I don't think so

The LE are there for far more than protecting Trump, crowd control comes immediately to mind. The bulk of the law enforcement are for crowd control. The secret service coordinates the locals is my understanding, apparently not this time.
 
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