While I agree with you on the relative importance of information, I respectfully disagree with you on “Then let’s deal with that later.” Having decades of experience doing and giving training on incident investigation and analysis, I see every detail as being needed to paint the whole picture of what happened and why, and that includes both causal and contributing factors. Put another way, the Mona Lisa would not be the painting it is without her smile, to be sure, but you also need her eyes to understand her smile. You could not tell the whole story in the painting without her eyes.
I am still working on my detailed analysis of the timeline of events while Crooks was on the AGR property before climbing on the roof. This is one of my summary slides (hot off the press) that focuses on the reporting of a suspicious person. In the game of cat and mouse, the cat doesn’t stand a chance when you give the mouse a whopping head start. That, to me, has a high relative importance in the grand scheme of things, along with other causal factors.
Taking a more granular look at a specific text message exchange through 4 layers of the command structure, we see where it took 15 minutes to get critical information to command. That explains a latter portion of the time delay.
Another chunk of that time falls squarely on Nicol’s shoulders. He obviously knows it judging by the way he’s trying to cover his ass and deflect the blame.
TXT at “17:38 – {Nicol} sends text to group text to Sniper Group about suspect”
Witness Interview – “’The first thing I did, I sent those pictures out [Fact: It was 24 minutes later, 5:14 pm to 5:38 pm.], we had a text group between the local snipers that were on the scene. I sent those pictures out to that group and advised them of what I noticed and what I’d seen,’ Nicol said. 'There was a text back that said, ‘Call it into command.’ I then called into our to the command via radio. And they acknowledged.’ ‘I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to – you know, to speak with this individual or, you know, find out what’s going on,’ he added.” (Source: ABC)