The Safe Zone

Update 7/25/2024: A friend sent a video that clearly established the location of Crookes and nearby sniper positions in the attempted Trump assassination. This doesn’t alter my opinion regarding the many breaches of normal security protocols, but it does show that my original illustration for this article was inaccurate.

The video shows that if a sniper looked out the windows overlooking the roof Crookes was on, they would not have seen him in his final shooting position. If, on the other hand, they were curious about the half of the roof they couldn’t see from inside, and poked their head out to see it, they would have seen Crookes.

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As more details are revealed regarding the Trump Assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last week, I am beginning to wonder who the Secret Service was assigned to protect. Were they there to protect President Trump, or the would-be assassin, Thomas Crookes?

Crookes somehow managed to navigate the Trump rally without any difficulty. He found his way to the most obvious and best location to shoot Trump from, produced a rifle, and shot Trump in the face. This is exactly what the Secret Service is supposed to prevent. However, the ordinary citizens and police of Butler County seemed to do more than the Secret Service.

Just as airline pilots have a takeoff checklist before they are allowed to fly, Secret Service agents and other security professionals have their own checklists to protect their clients. Any violation of a checklist item is a red flag, and in Butler County, there are a lot of red flags.

The biggest red flag is that Crookes managed to get on the roof of the building identified by the Secret Service earlier in the week as the best location for a would-be assassin. After getting there, he also managed to shoot Trump despite being surrounded by agents who knew he was there and had known for about an hour.

To use a term from video games development, it was as if Crookes was playing in “God mode.” God mode is when all obstacles are turned off so that developers can examine a game quickly. Games are much easier to play when all the villains ignore you as if you aren’t there, and that is what seems to have happened last week at the rally.

• The Secret Service identified the building used by Crookes as a significant security vulnerability days before the shooting.

• At 5:14 PM, an hour and four minutes before the shooting took place, someone from the Beaver County sniper team photographed Crookes from a high angle, looking down through the 2nd floor window of the building Crookes used to shoot at Trump. The photo was taken because he was “suspicious.”

• Locals at the rally alerted local police that Crookes was suspicious and using a range finder. This was relayed to the sniper team in the building Crookes used to shoot Trump, and two officers then abandoned their posts to search for Crookes.

• Crookes was observed climbing the building 20 minutes before he started shooting.

• The Secret Service confirmed they saw Crookes on the roof 20 minutes before he started shooting.

• A local police officer saw Crookes on the roof, climbed up with the help of a colleague, but fell to the ground after Crookes pointed his rifle at him.

• Rally attendees saw Crookes and that he was armed with a rifle on the rooftop minutes before the shooting. These witnesses attempted to interest police in the danger posed by Crookes. Several took video of Crookes in which they can be heard telling the police and others that there is a shooter on the roof.

• At no time was a call made to President Trump’s security detail. In such situations, it is standard protocol to wait until the threat is contained before allowing a protectee to walk into an exposed position.

The fact that Crookes was able to occupy the prime sniper position unmolested is remarkable on its own. It shouldn’t have been possible. The Secret Service knew it was the best location an assassin could use to shoot Trump, and wrote as much in their assessment of the site. The point of the assessment was to allocate resources to best protect Trump. Meaning, that building had to be secure. And yet, it wasn’t.

Even more remarkable is that Crookes was spotted over an hour before the shooting by rally goers, law enforcement, and at least one sniper team. Despite this awareness and that he was clearly suspicious and later deemed a threat, Crookes was able to proceed with his plan as if in God mode: as if there were no police, Secret Service, or a Beaver County SWAT sniper team situated in the same building he was in, with a perfect view of Crookes lying on the roof.

Even the best video game players must engage with their enemies. They succeed because they’re better at fighting the enemies than most players. The only way to walk by every single hazard unmolested is to turn every hazard off. This, it seems, is what someone did for Thomas Crookes.

Who was the real protectee? Based on what I’ve seen, it looked like Crookes was better protected than Trump, right up until Trump turned his head and thwarted the would-be assassin.