The nation may have dodged a fatal bullet because if former President Donald Trump had been assassinated, the county would have been in turmoil, said William Bratton, former Los Angeles Police Department chief, while explaining unpredictable events like campaign rallies pose challenges to security details.
The Secret Service pledged Monday to cooperate with an investigation for Saturday’s rally, which has raised questions about security protocols and coordination between law enforcement agencies.
“It appears a significant failure on the part of the Secret Service,” Bratton said, questioning how the attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, managed to position himself on a rooftop approximately 150 yards from Trump outside the designated security perimeter.
"You could have almost basically hit him with a handgun along with a rifle from that distance," Bratton noted. "The roofs that were so close to this event, you would have thought they were secured in some regard."
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In Bratton’s extensive law enforcement experiences, there are multiple security perimeters at presidential rallies with local, county and state law enforcement assisting.
“One of the problems in these events is that you have so many different departments that the cooperation and coordination between the agencies can become very difficult,” he said.
Video from the event showed some supporters at the rally had spotted the shooter before Crooks started firing, alerting the police.
“So what communications lapses occurred that this information was not immediately relayed?” asked Bratton.
House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding information about the security plans for the rally.
“There’s not a large well of resources,” Dr. Roy Taylor, a law enforcement consultant with 40 years of experience, pointed out that rallies may have far less planning compared to other national events.
"The last Republican National Convention that I worked in Charlotte we were planning for exactly one year out,” Taylor said. “But these campaign events are coming up fairly rapidly, moving from area to area, state to state, and it's difficult for the Secret Service agents to have enough planning time and gather their resources.”
Taylor also pointed out that there may have been insufficient security.
“It's a limited number of agents assigned to the former president. He wasn't the presumptive nominee yet so the amount of security that he would have had would have been less than that.”
Two sources familiar with the secret service operations tell NBC news Monday that the roof where the shooter fired was identified as a potential vulnerability ahead of the event.
