The Las Vegas mass shooting, where the gunman opened fire on a festival crowd from his 32nd floor window, is the sort of nightmare scenario which is almost impossible to prevent, security experts say.
Cops in big cities with many high rise buildings, such as New York, Chicago and Austin, are seeking to reassure residents that they are safe after Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, killed 59 and injured more than 500 in a Sunday night bloodbath.
Vegas massacre survivors have repeatedly compared the gunman’s attack on revelers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival to shooting fish in a barrel.
But security experts and top cops alike have been forced to admit that no amount of training and preparation can prevent someone ‘intent on doing harm’.
The Las Vegas mass shooting, where the gunman opened fire on a festival crowd from his 32nd floor window, is the sort of nightmare scenario which is almost impossible to prevent, security experts say (Secret Service snipers keep watch from the roof of the 9/ 11 Memorial Museum in 2011)
Cops in big cities with many high rise buildings, such as New York, Chicago and Austin, are seeking to reassure residents that they are safe after Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, killed 59 and injured more than 500 on Sunday (drapes billow out of broken windows at the Mandalay Bay out of which Paddock fired down on the crowd)
First responders and bystanders carry an injured person to an emergency station located at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Ave – one block north of the shooting
‘They will find a way to do it,’ said David Katz, CEO of Global Security Group, which conducts active-shooter training around the world.
‘The answer only really is, if there’s a sniper, there’s a counter-sniper.’
But ‘you’re not going to be able to deploy police units with sniper capabilities everywhere,’ Katz said. ‘There are, at some point, too many things going on, too many opportunities to stop them all.’
New York City’s police boss says that regularly includes sharpshooters with binoculars on rooftops scanning nearby building windows for potential threats, helicopters circling above with snipers of their own, and detectives making security sweeps of nearby hotels.
But he too acknowledged there is only so much that can be done.
New York City’s police boss says that regularly includes sharpshooters with binoculars on rooftops scanning nearby building windows for potential threats (a New York police officer uses binoculars while keeping watch from a rooftop along Times Square during New Year’s Eve celebrations in 2015)
The Las Vegas shooting from a high-rise hotel that killed dozens of people in a packed concert below has forced other cities to examine their tactics for dealing with this kind of nightmare scenario ( Dec. 31, 2015, people gather at Times Square during New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York)
‘We do understand,’ said NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, ‘that no city or town in this country is completely immune to such unbridled hatred.’
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose son will be among the 45,000 runners in the city’s annual marathon Sunday, said emergency officials, including federal authorities, have conducted roughly a dozen workshops to talk through various scenarios and Chicago is prepared for ‘any eventuality.’
‘People don’t just show up on marathon day and decide to run 26 miles. They train all year,’ Emanuel said. ‘That’s also true of the Chicago police.’
Despite assurances of a heavy police presence at this weekend’s Austin City Limits music festival, expected to draw 75,000 people a day to the city’s downtown, organizers were offering refunds to anyone uncomfortable with attending following the Las Vegas shooting.
A sniper team stands watch during a visit by the prime minister of India to the National September 11 Memorial, in New York in 2014
Perhaps the most stark example of the crowd-building dynamic is in New York, where the city’s 36,000-officer department regularly goes on high alert for such events as the New Year’s Eve Times Square celebration, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, Monday’s Columbus Day parade, even some Yankees games.
For such events, the NYPD puts officers with body armor and high-powered weapons around the perimeter, sharpshooters on nearby rooftops to scan the windows of other buildings for threats, and cops with bullhorns on the streets instructing gawkers in nearby buildings to keep their windows closed.
They also have detectives ramp up security sweeps at hotels, particularly ahead of the holiday season. And the NYPD has a program to train thousands of private businesses and employees, from housekeeping staff to security, on how to spot explosives or tell a golf bag from a gun case.
David C. Kelly, associate managing director K2 Intelligence and the former assistant commissioner for counterterrorism at the NYPD, said the shooting forces private security and law enforcement alike to give more regular events treatment usually reserved for special occasions like a president or a pope’s visit.
‘It’s a big ask, but maybe that’s what needs to be done now,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s forcing law enforcement to look at this in three dimensions, the car in the crowd, the bomb in the backpack, now the assault from the air.’