-
NYT reported that an SS supervisor decided their cordon of control wouldn’t extend to the warehouse, and left it for police to secure. Both organisations but especially the SS needed to have set a detailed MOU about how the locals were going to secure that building, which they clearly didn’t. Also evident was the lack of an effective emergency comms channel, by which the SS at the stage could have been alerted as soon as the local cop saw the gun, and moved trump before the shooting started.
Before they could shoot the guy they had to work out whether he was a local police sniper.
That’s not really a concern, or it shouldn’t have been if protocols were followed. The SS would have known about any and all armed police capability deployed anywhere near trump, and they also would not have allowed any non-SS sniper to be deployed near him anyway. A lone person wearing corrective glasses and casual clothing, prone behind a rifle without a scope or a tripod, and appearing to aim anywhere except 180deg away from trump is a threat to be engaged first and queried later. If it had turned out to be a plain clothes cop with crappy equipment whose boss didn’t tell the SS that’s where he’d be, the SS would still have been completely right to have shot him on sight.
It was a tragicomedy of errors. From the public seeing the shooter and trying vainly to alert security for several minutes, to the close protection officers letting trump collect his shoes and then endanger himself and them by standing still multiple times to make his grand gestures, to the vehicles waiting so many meters away instead of stage-side… Not at all how a worldclass organisation should perform. Genuinely embarrassing.
You are reading a single comment by @Muc-ed-off and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
Muc-ed-off
There's a persuasive story which says that SS does an advance survey of all the spots which a shooter might use. But during an event they don't watch the spots at medium range. Local police have to do that. SS only has enough people to watch close range and long range. (Maybe the local police can't watch the long range spots because they don't have the fancy scopes and sights?) So it was local police who failed to stop the guy from climbing onto the roof and failed to see him lying there. The SS snipers were focused on the long range spots, then the shots happened, then the snipers shifted to look at the roof. In the video you can see them shifting their view and aiming at a new target. Before they could shoot the guy they had to work out whether he was a local police sniper. Hence the delay.