The texts showed that an officer spotted Crooks occupying a suspicious area more than an hour-and-a-half before the July 13 rally commenced at 6 p.m. Previously, Secret Service officials said Crooks was first spotted an hour before the rally—an amount of time many lawmakers already considered to be egregious at a presidential candidate’s rally.
Other texts obtained by the Times revealed that an officer spotted Crooks using a range finder about 20 minutes before the rally began and snapped photos of him—but didn’t approach him.
The strangest part of this is people expecting cops to do something that might plausibly put them in harms way
Modern cops are almost exclusively all lazy cowards at this point.
It has also been ruled repeatedly that police do not have a duty to protect you. There is no requirement that they risk their lives to keep you or anyone else from harm unless they have a “special relationship” with you, meaning you are in their custody. The cops were there to work the metal detectors and direct traffic. There’s no way in hell they were going to take a bullet for Trump. That’s the Secret Service’s job.
Cops aren’t trained in operational security. When you have a large event with multiple agencies and groups of people doing different things, then it’s easy to blend in if you act like you know what you’re doing. You can walk into almost any building if you throw on a high vis vest and carry a ladder. People will hold the door open for you and even let you into high security areas if you are smooth enough.
This kid obviously didn’t blend in if the cops were talking about him and taking photos.
Crazy person open carrying an AR 15 would probably blend in fine at a Trump rally…
Yeah right Republican rallies and conventions are “gun free” zones where you no longer have your 2A rights, apparently. People carrying at these rallies would require Republicans to be logically consistent.
Then why didn’t they just go talk to him?
My educated guess is that they looked at him milling about outside the rally and assumed he was a Trump supporter based on his look and wouldn’t be a problem.
As for the real answer, we’ll have to wait for them to give a statement, but it’ll likely be watered-down misinformation that paints police in the best light, so we’ll probably never know for sure.
Shift change. Not kidding. It’s in the article.
A button-down shirt/khakis and lanyard with a name badge often works, too, especially if you’re talking while using a Bluetooth headset and typing on a phone. People just assume you’re some low-level exec or IT support personnel, esp if your phone is on one of those tacky belt clips.
“hey u see that guy on the roof with a rifle?”
“yah lol”
.
“It’s ok, everyone here has way more guns. That’ll make him stop and go home, mark my w…. Oh shit!!”
To be fair they went to confront him and he pointed his gun at their head. Since those who went to confront weren’t armed, they retreated and sounded an alert, but the dude shot towards diaper don before anyone could do anything about it.
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Where did you read any of that?
It doesn’t say whether the cop was armed or not, but given that he was holding the ledge, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway.
Yesterdays NYT article on it. They had a long one in the print.
90 minutes before that, probably:
officer:1 “You guys see that kid walking around the neighboring building with a gun, lol?”
officer2: “Yeah, I waved at him, somebody should make sure he’s not here to shoot the president lol”
So… I guess cops literally aren’t here to protect anyone.
Whether you’re a kid in school, or a former president. Cops ain’t here for you.
the most interesting thing about all of this is how no one’s really outraged at this colossal police failure, like they usually are. it’s like “oh… they dropped the ball on trump’s security? oh well shit happens whattayagonnado amirite?”
We already know that cops are incompetent. We would just like it if they weren’t also doing the occasional murder.
Yeah, that was shown in Warren v. DC, in 1981.
So I’m guessing that no one from a foreign government has even tried to take out presidential candidates? Because this kid got extremely close all while openly researching past assassinations, scoped out the rally site before the secret service, flew his drone and even got spotted multiple times. I could only imagine how easy it would be for real professional killers funded by a government.
I bet they will be now
I like to think that there’s been a regular effort to stay ahead of those who might try things, and often they get thwarted early on and we just don’t hear about it. Because if that’s not what’s been happening for years, and things that do happen are only because of mistakes or blatant removal of the efforts (looking at you, Cheney)…then no one except the few historically acts has bothered to try anything, and that seems really unlikely given how much the rest of the world “loves” us so much.
Hardly a fan of Trump, but he is a former President and due the protection that apparently was not fully engaged. Why it wasn’t in place needs to be discovered and fixed. For all sides, this isn’t partisan, this is basic security. And if this is broke, what else is?
You don’t have to imagine. It was 9/11/2001 that proved it.
RIP President Twin Towers. Never froget
How did they wear trousers, like this
[ ] [ ] [ ]_[ ] [ ]or like this
[ _ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]?
This presidential protection detail has been provided by the Uvalde Sheriff’s Dept.
Agreed, we need to get the Secret Service to clean up their act before we end up risking the life of some better President!
wait they fucking did an uvalde? lmfao
Thin blue linotmyproblem
When everyone thinks it’s someone else’s problem and that person will deal with it.
I mean, ACAB, but I do relate to not wanting to die for Donald Trump, and preferring texts to hostile in person meetings.
This seems the most likely reason. It is sort of like they teach in first aid. You don’t say someone call 911 because everyone thinks someone else will. You need to tell one person directly.
The problem here is that it is not a group of untrained bystanders stumbling upon a surprise emergency. There is supposed to be a pre-established chain of command and group to take these reports and ensure that they are investigated.
Hell, I was part of events where governors made appearances, and the county had their communication command post setup and even gave radios and a briefing to our volunteers at gates and all of the area leads to report anything directly to the command post.
Even Burning Man has a proper chain of command for incident management. If a bunch of hippies in the desert can do it, the Secret Service has no excuse.
seems like teaching cops to put their own safety before literally everyone else is maybe a non-small portion of the problem
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Can’t wait to see these photos
Secret Service and local PD absolutely deserve to get reemed out and punished for this gross incompetence and security failure.
This is a huge issue that needs to be remedied quickly, else all our current and future politicians are at risk from internal or foreign enemies of the state. Regardless of your political alignment, all our politicians deserve a secure environment without risk to their own lives.
Anyone that blows this off as, it was just Trump, is massively underestimating the scale of this issue.
ACAB
I mean, I wouldn’t have stopped him either.
Lazy cops being lazy cops. Politically I don’t think there is any world where Trump is a net positive, even if you’re an accelerationist. However, if you’re a cop, you’re supposedly a steward of public safety. Any interdiction before that kid grabbed his backpack could’ve saved lives. Including the shooter’s if there had been any de-escalation success.
ACAB
this will totally fuel the right media conspiracies
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don’t most people get in trouble for social texting on the job ?
Social? They were communicating potential dangers during a shift change. That’s their job.
