No. of Recommendations: 15
The reality here is that this is a former President and a current Presidential candidate. While those people get secret service protection, they do not get the same number of assets that the sitting President gets. And it's probably an order of magnitude less.
Secret Service personnel are quite stretched at this moment in time. They're handling Biden's current needs. They're preparing for the convention in Milwaukee. I'm not sure if Trump had another rally planned after Butler and before the convention. If so, there's more personnel there. There's the advance planning for Chicago in a couple of weeks. There's simply a lot going on at the moment.
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Risks of murder and life-threatening injuries from gun violence are posed to EVERY American citizen EVERY day by laws which have crippled the ability to keep obscenely destructive weapons out of non-military hands. Forty plus years of propaganda about wasteful and incompetent government has likely resulted in salary pools for law enforcement at all levels failing to keep up with population growth much less the huge uptick in the threat of violence. At the same time, we are now roughly twenty years into a public experiment in social-media induced depression, paranoia and psychosis at the same time the same anti-government sentiments have also failed to adequately fund mental health care costs in the country.
If the Secret Service is already operationally challenged at protecting its non-election-season protectees (President & family, VP and family, Speaker, a few others...), then adding one or two alternate Presidential candidates seems bound to come at the expense of THE principle protectee. Add to that additional cash draw the fact that the Presidential candidate and ex-President CONSISTENTLY flits between THREE OR FOUR homes that all require continual protection of the premises and the staffing and funding problem gets far worse.
Add to that the fact that the same candidate who is particularly inflammatory in his public appearances also has a consistent tendency over three different elections (2016, 2020 and now 2024) of not paying local communities for extra police protection requested not just for the candidate but campaign staff and the public at each appearance and the situation becomes far more dangerous -- for the candidate and those attending his rallies. In the 2020 campaign, at least fourteen different cities were owed money by the Trump campaign for security services. Trump argued those are the responsiblity of the Secret Service. WRONG. The Secret Service only protects the President and a small bubble of family and Presidential staff around the President. The CAMPAIGN still must foot the bills needed to pay for protective measures for the campaign staff and the public at large.
My understanding of the responsibilties and the actual events that allowed this shooting to occur is that:
* Secret Service is top dog regarding arrangements safeguarding its protectee
* Pennsylvania State Police, local county police and local city police assisted
* the shooter had not camped out on the roof for hours...
* the shooter scaled the roof maybe 5-10 minutes before the scheduled start
* people outside the secured perimeter saw the shooter appear on the roof IMMEDIATELY
* they tried to notify "police" within earshot IMMEDIATELY to no avail
* the building used by the shooter was an interior huddle point for police working the event
* the shooter's presence was either tipped by the noise of him on the metal roof...
* ...or someone nearby outside the building seeing him climb up
* the first officer who ATTEMPTED to scale the roof didn't do so in a way that prepared him to fire upon seeing the shooter so HE had to retreat
* that gave the shooter probably 20-40 extra seconds to take his shot
There is video of numerous citizens attending the rally and standing outside the secured part of the venue yelling at nearby policemen and pointing to the shooter first coming into view on the roof and trying to stay low rather than walking upright on the roof. Again, timestamps are not clear but those videos appear to be at least 15-20 seconds before the shooter was in position to fire.
What ISN'T clear is the level of radio communication and synchronization avialable to all police forces present. Once someone saw a man scale a ROOF, that should have triggered an update to all snipers (police or Secret Service) that an unexplained breach had taken place and the protectee should not come out in public.
I haven't seen any tick-tock or record of radio communication between officers that confirmed that the snipers began targeting the shooter by being informed of his presence.
So far, it appears as though they simply heard his gunfire, searched the horizon to find him for about 4-5 seconds then took their shots.
Without seeing the results of a competent investigation, this information isn't enough to certify what happened. However, it APPEARS as though the Secret Service, state, county and local officers assigned to the event were
a) insufficient in number to cover the venue
b) didn't demonstrate use of a consistent, rehearsed go/no-go protocol for declaring the venue safe or declaring it "tainted" by an unknown person reaching a point of EXTREME tactical risk to the protectee and the public
c) didn't adequately engage the shooter at the point his position and threat became known
d) didn't do a very good job protecting Trump AFTER he was shot
The officer who attempted to scale the roof to "confront" the shooter should have done so prepared to shoot the second he gained sight of the shooter. Or, he probably just should have fired a shot into the air to attract the attention of other snipers to that direction to let them do their thing. All officers working the event should have had the situational awareness that THAT building was a high risk structure if an "uncontrolled person" suddenly appeared on it. Had the shooter shot at HIM, THAT would have been enough noise to attract the snipers on the other building to then take him out or at least supress his fire and trigger other Secret Service from bringing Trump to the dais.
The officers that allowed Trump to get back up while surrounding him for protection were likely told the shooter had been neutralized but that's not the same as knowing the ENTIRE VENUE was re-secured. They had NO WAY of knowing there weren't other shooters at that time. Their decision to move him in an upright stance while surrounding HIM to protect HIM did NOTHING to protect all of the people still in the stands that might have been shot had another shooter been available. Keeping Trump BEHIND / BELOW the dais and the armor protection hidden behind all of the decorative bunting would have been a safer strategy for EVERYONE at risk.
It seems clear that law enforcement officials at every level need better communiction tools for large scale events. If only we had the technology... A way of equiping every officer with some sort of wireless communication device... That implemented some sort of instant "panic button" signal... A signal that, once sent by anyone carrying a device, would instantly signal a CODE RED condition on every other device of every other officer... If only officers could be trained that if they see that signal, KEEP THE PROTECTEE under cover and stop the event.
But instead, America blew BILLIONS of dollars over the last twenty three years buying automatic weapons, Humvees, and other "tough-guy" military surplus to hand to local LEOs so they could intimidate the public while still failing to storm a school while children are being slaughtered.
WTH
