Local Cop Confronted Trump Gunman Before Shooting—But Backed Away: Report
Local Cop Confronted Trump Gunman Before Shooting—But Backed Away: Report
The revelation raises more questions about Secret Service and law enforcement actions before Thomas Crooks opened fire.
Does this cop work at Uvalde?
Well it's not like a cop at a Trump rally is going to going to impede the ambitions of a second amendment loving white kid.
God I want this to be the talking point until november.
It won't be
Why did the FBI have this kids DNA on file?
The FBI identified Crooks by analyzing his DNA, officials told local CBS affiliate KDKA, as he did not have any identification on him.
This is the part that makes me go wtf...
How did they go from sampling his DNA and identifying him in that short amount? I don't remember the exact time, but it seemed like it took about 5 hours.
Edit: It's been a long day and I guess my timeline is way off. I thought they identified the suspect last night, but apparently it was sometime early this morning. That makes the turn around time a lot less wtf.
I was hoping daily beast's source link had more info, but no. I even looked for the full article and it is equally devoid of details. From apnews :
A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, the officials said.
Honestly, I don't blame the office for not getting pointlessly shot. I hope the officer immediately messaged the situation, but it was probably too late.
In fact, one of the news sites last night showed the shooting from an angle where you could see the anti-sniper to Trump's right (left side of TV screen) as the shots came in.
I'd swear I could see the anti-sniper's recoil hitting BEFORE Trump was shot. Don't quote me on that, though. I'm not an expert.
Bad take. If he'd gotten shot, the snipers would have immediately killed the shooter before he could reposition and take more shots. It would have saved a guy's life and kept a former president from being shot, so definitely not pointless. And he likely had on body armor so he had a lot better chance of surviving than any of the people in the crowd did.
Alright, I admit that from a tactical point of view, if the local cop got shot it would have alerted other security and maybe no one would have died ... though at such short range, it would be likely that the cop died instead of the firefighter in the stands.
That said, I still don't blame the cop -- who I presume never had Secret Service training -- for taking cover when someone aims a gun at them. That seems like an instinctive reaction that you'd need serious training to overcome. I expect it to take a few seconds at least to figure out how to approach the situation before you stick your head back up for easy targeting.
Better solutions might have been to either: a) have at least one person on that group of rooftops and every/any other roof-group in advance, or short of that b) when rally-goers said there was someone on the roof with a gun, radio that info FIRST and THEN look. It is possible that the latter happened, but no one passed the information forward and the cops haven't owned up to the failure yet, but IF that happened, that sort of detail would tend to come out later rather than immediately.
The article says the gunman then immediately turned and fired at Trump, so I'm not sure that there's actually a problem with what this officer did. If he'd tried to charge the gunman, he'd immediately have been shot himself, then the guy would have shot at Trump anyway.
From what I see what went wrong is letting the speech continue after receiving a report of a gunmen, and then even worse they let the speech continue after visually confirming the gunmen.
The cop should have radiod "investigatig a gunmen on this rooftop" and as soon as he did they should have stopped the speech and gotten Trump to safety.
I could see them let it go on after a report - I'd expect they get a lot of threats and possibly fake reports too.
But for the rest.. yea.. as soon as he was sighted the security detail should have been on the move to cover trump.
Considering how people get shot for looking like they are thinking of a weapon when near the cops, it's shocking that the counter snipers didn't immediately shoot him once he aimed the gun at the officer.
Maybe. I don't know what their threshold is for validity of a report before they take action.
I do think that if the officer had tried to intervene and gotten shot, the guy would have immediately been shot by one of the snipers, maybe fast enough that he wouldn't have gotten a shot off at Trump. All I can do is speculate; I don't know what their policy is. But in his place, I probably would have done the same kind of thing, like putting my hands up and taking a step back until I get reinforcements or snipers take him out. But I guess there wasn't time for that.
But yeah, after confirming a gunman they definitely should have hustled him off the stage.
Truly, some of those who work forces, are the same who burn crosses.
Maybe we shouldn't screen out intelligent people from law enforcement.