• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Crazy person open carrying an AR 15 would probably blend in fine at a Trump rally…

          • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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            5 months ago

            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.

          • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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            5 months ago

            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.

      • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        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.

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      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?”

      • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        We already know that cops are incompetent. We would just like it if they weren’t also doing the occasional murder.

      • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I mean, it’s his campaign’s decision to hold these giant open air rallies in unsecured locations. So… shrug

      • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Trump and his ilk are a big factor to why the police are like this so it’s a bit of karmic justice regardless of anything else.

  • Tire@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • d00ery@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Perhaps the only reason it’s not been attempted is that Trump is the best bet for most enemy foreign governments.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      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?

    • superterran@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Agreed, we need to get the Secret Service to clean up their act before we end up risking the life of some better President!

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Wish there had been this much scrutiny of the police’s behavior on Jan. 6.

    • geekworking@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        5 months ago

        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.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        seems like teaching cops to put their own safety before literally everyone else is maybe a non-small portion of the problem

  • BlitzFitz @lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • Media Bias Fact Checker@lemmy.worldB
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    5 months ago
    Daily Beast Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [Medium] (Click to view Full Report)

    Daily Beast is rated with Medium Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.

    Bias: Left
    Factual Reporting: Mixed
    Country: United States of America
    Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-beast/

    Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News:
    - https://ground.news/find?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Ftexts-show-how-officers-lost-track-of-trump-rally-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks%3Fref%3Dhome%3Fref%3Dhome


    Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
    Please consider supporting them by donating.

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  • kbin_space_program@kbin.run
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    5 months ago

    We knew this already?

    The local sniper team was already reported to have sent this up the chain but got no response until that guy climed onto the roof and was about the shoot.

      • aodhsishaj@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        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