Nightmare scenario: tall buildings, big crowds

The Las Vegas gunman’s perch in a 32nd-floor hotel room overlooking 22,000 people at a music festival below is the kind of scenario police dread.

From two broken windows at the Mandalay Bay Resort, Stephen Craig Paddock was able to rain bullets on a crowd that had nowhere to hide.

In places like New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas, where big events are planned in the coming days, police sought to reassure residents by outlining some of the precautions they are taking.

New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill said these measures include sharpshooters with binoculars on rooftops scanning nearby building windows for potential threats, helicopters circling above with snipers and detectives making security sweeps of nearby hotels.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel said emergency officials have conducted roughly a dozen workshops and that Chicago is prepared for “any eventuality”.

Despite assurances of a heavy police presence at this weekend’s Austin City Limits music festival, organisers are offering refunds to anyone uncomfortable with attending following the Las Vegas shooting.

Austin knows all too well the dangers of high-angle shootings.

In August 1966, Marine-trained sniper Charles Whitman fired for 90 minutes from the 27-storey clock tower in the heart of the University of Texas campus in the city, killing 17 people and wounding 30 more.

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, and even some New York Yankees baseball games.

For such events, the NYPD puts officers with body armour around the perimeter, sharpshooters on rooftops to scan threats and police with bullhorns on the streets instructing people to keep their windows closed.

Tribute to those killed on Sunday.