We don’t know the officer knew about the gun before climbing the rooftop. We don’t know if the officer first alerted to the gun immediately prior to shots fired.
It looks like a single storey and per reports the officer was boosted up to grab the ledge of the roof. Even if he had seen the gun from the ground and alerted that very instant, he could have grabbed the ledge, been faced by the suspect, let go, and shots fired, within the span of a couple seconds.
~Max
As I understand it he was responding to multiple people who saw the gunman climb up with a rifle.
Yet the sheriff pointedly told the press the initial calls of a suspicious man did not mention a rifle.
~Max
The BBC interview immediately afterwards says otherwise.
There’s a BBC interview of law enforcement?
~Max
It’s an interview of the witnesses.
The red haired guy? I thought he said he was trying to alert the police for minutes.
Trying. Pointing. Shouting.
~Max
The reports I am seeing say that the secret service delegated securing the rooftops to local police. However, the secret service is ultimately responsible for ensuring that rooftops are covered. The shooter should never have been able to access the roof. Also, with any suspicious reports of someone crawling on a rooftop, the could have gotten Trump offstage. This is going to go down as a major secret service failure. Not to mention they let him pop his head and arm out when they were escorting him offstage to the vehicle. Granted that they were trying to control him but he should have been better covered.
The SS was probably the agency coordinating all the other agencies. The people pointing out the shooter were 50 feet away from the building yelling at the officer. The red haired man said he could see the rifle and “they” were yelling at the police.
It doesn’t seem like the area was well secured. Time will tell. I saw a clip of what looked like the SS snipers but I can’t find it. They looked like they were on a rooftop. Maybe they were local police snipers.
Here’s a video of the shooter getting in to position. Apologies if linked already.
Wow, just wow. This is inexcusable on the SS part to allow this to happen. There should have been either someone stationed on that roof since it had a clear line of sight to the canidate, or at least the entire area around the building sealed off because it had a clear line of sight to the canidate . Being outside of the one of the secure zones is no excuse here.
And the officer who climbed up there and saw him should have given notice over the radio that he was going up on top of the roof to investagate a suspecious person, which should have drawn attention to the roof top. Lest the officer himself got shot by the SS.
The reports I read in the NYT indicated that the Secret Service sniper only became aware of the shooter once the guy started shooting. The sniper immediately shot and killed the shooter.
I’ve not read or seen anything that suggests the SS snipers were aware of the bad guy on the roof yet didn’t act.
For a while I just sort of assumed the guy must have climbed up in the middle of the night and waited. I wondered how anyone could spend hours up there in direct sunlight on such a hot day.
Never assume, ya know? The shooter actually seems to have gone up not long before he did his shooter things but I dont know for sure. (But I must find out!)
I haven’t fact-checked this, but one of the comments says, based on where Trump was in the speech, this is footage from a full two minutes before the shots were fired. If that’s true, holy hell did they give him all the time in the world, and how many dozens of attendees at least were aware of his presence on the roof?
It’s really surprising to me that they didn’t have SS on that roof to begin with. I thought they would always station them on any nearby roof.
Even in that case, it would be wild to think that you wouldn’t be met by the SS shooter stationed on that roof by the time the rally started. There’s what, 4 buildings on that property and one adjacent to the field, the one he was on? I would be under the impression they’d all be covered. But I am not a crazy person.
Your initial thought that he waited overnight is moot tho, the video linked a few posts before yours shows he got up there just before shooting.
Agree. But there are a lot of AR-15 fan boys out there. Sure it’s fine for what it does (don’t own one, shot one once). I would think that since PA is full of hunters, and deer, a hunting rifle would make sense. Basically what Marine snipers use.
I’m not a hunter myself, but I like to target shoot.
If you put in “Butler Farm Show, Inc.” in Butler, PA into google maps you can get a good sense of the area. It’s much “bigger” than it appears. Dozens of buildings. Lots to cover.
I doubt those snipers were covering a building so close (until they knew the shooter was there).
Yeah. This is weird. And if the SS saw the guy on the roof, why in the hell did they not alert whomever could check it out, and keep Trump off the stage?
I still don’t think it was a false flag, but a pretty damn big screw up. They saw the guy? And did nothing? Maybe they thought he was a local just watching from a roof top? I suppose…
What I fear this attempt will inspire is MORE assassination attempts and other forms of political violence across the nation and around the world.
However you align, more death won’t improve anything!