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.
Thanks SCOTUS, you ruled cops don’t have to protect and this is the result.
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…
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”
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.
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?”
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 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?
This presidential protection detail has been provided by the Uvalde Sheriff’s Dept.
