Las Vegas Shooter Had Set Up Cameras

If you might ever end up running into this, food for thought:

As he fired round after round during an 11-minute stretch from a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Paddock used video cameras to keep an eye out for police storming his hotel room, according to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo.

Paddock hid one camera in the peephole of his suite and two more in the hall, at least one of them disguised on a service cart, authorities said. At one point, he shot numerous rounds through the door, wounding a security guard. Paddock eventually put a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger as SWAT officers closed in. They found him with blood pooling behind his head and around the empty shell casings that littered the carpet, a handgun near his body.

“It was preplanned, extensively, and I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome,” Lombardo said.

Interesting he planned perimeter surveillance. You would not normally see that before, though now every asshole who does this will probably feature it as part of their plan. Either he was an amateur who put a lot of thought into this, or he had some sort of experience observing how criminals watch out for Law Enforcement at a criminal site. It does make cognitive dysfunction slightly less likely if he was just a normal accountant who was out of work.

If there were no cops on scene, and it had just started so it was clear they were minutes off, I could have seen being down the hall with a Glock, and rushing the room just to get some pressure on the shooter until cops arrived. As surveillance aware as I am, I would almost certainly not have thought of this in the heat of the moment, or predicted the blast of high powered automatic rifle-fire that would have met me through the door.

So this is a good lesson in these mad times. First, focus on the odd. The amygdala is designed to, so let it, and listen to it. I might have seen the cart as odd, and thought it was a bomb, so at least I would have been somewhat cautious. Then approach from a blind spot. If it isn’t blind to cameras, kill the lights, come from an unexpected angle, look harmless as you approach, or do something unexpected.

But most of all, pause for a moment, assume you were bent on doing what is happening, and you planned it extensively. Imagine how you would thwart yourself, see yourself coming, and stop yourself, before you go charging in. Those who do these types of things may have prepared far more for them than you have. Here, if you pictured a camera, then a paperclip loaded into the right electric socket might have shut down that camera, and if not, there was a breaker to throw, or even a light switch somewhere that could have made that hallway a blindspot.

Then focus on not getting sideways with the police when they arrive, because they will arrive looking for anyone with a gun to engage.

Spread r/K Theory, because these are the times we live in