Incompetence, deliberate, or something else?

With regards to the Vegas shooting, there are many theories. Some are outrageous, some buying the official version, some make more sense than others. Everyone seems to have their own theory. Why there are so many theories is obvious: the official investigation is being publicly and obviously bungled.

The Las Vegas metro police cannot even establish basic facts. When did the shooter (I won't use his name) check in to the hotel? Was it the 28th? Or was it the 25th? Don't the police department, the FBI, and all of the other agencies involved have the ability to check the hotel register?  This seems rather basic to me.

They cannot even establish a timeline. When was the security guard shot? Six minutes before the crowd was fired upon? Immediately before the crowd was fired upon? After? When was 911 called? As a former emergency worker who was involved in hundreds of criminal and internal investigations, I can tell you that ALL radio traffic and 911 calls are recorded and time stamped. Why can't the cops reliably establish a timeline of something that their own systems record and time stamp?

Even though there are several receipts from room service showing that there were two people in the room, there has been no explanation of who the two are.There are reports that there was a phone charger that could not be matched to any of the shooter's devices, then the next day, the cops say "nevermind, we figured it out." Matching phones to chargers: a skill that any average American middle school student has mastered, seemingly can't be handled by the FBI or a major metropolitan police department.

While his car was out of the garage, his room was opened with the key. The police and FBI have not even tried to explain this one away. More incompetence? Cover up? Who  knows?

Instead of explaining all of this, the FBI's official line is that there was not a second person. Since the FBI can't figure out who the person was, there must not be one, and if there is not a second person, then the shooter was obviously faking the existence of the second person. Case solved. This is the height of incompetence and arrogance. The FBI is essentially saying "If we don't know it, it must not exist."

It is a fact that no one can count cards or cheat in a Vegas casino, yet the shooter- a man who is 6 foot four, was not seen on camera entering or leaving the place even once. To haul nearly a thousand pounds of firearms and ammunition into the room would have taken several trips, even using a luggage cart.

The security guard who was shot: Where is he? Why did he disappear? Why isn't there a security guard licensed in Nevada by that name? Was he registered under a fake name? Or is his legal name different than the name that people use? After all, I used to have people call me by my middle name, and maybe that is the case here. Even so, why did he disappear?

A reporter trying to get answers to these questions has had her press credentials taken away, and is now prohibited from attending LVMP press conferences. She was also chased away from the home of the missing security guard by an armed man who claims to work for On Scene security. On Scene security doesn't have an active license to operate in the state of Nevada. Their license expired in January, and the corporate address is a company that provides virtual office space.

There are so many problems and inconsistencies with the investigation that it is no wonder that people are creating their own theories to fill the void. Nothing about this makes sense. There are a few old sayings that come to mind: "Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence."

At the same time, there is Occam's razor, which essentially says that when presented with multiple theories about a phenomenon, the one which requires the fewest assumptions (the simplest) is usually the correct one.

In this case, we are asked to choose between two explanations:
1 That a man who has no public persona, no political opinion, no history of mental illness, was a person who made more than $5 million a year but can't fully explain where it came from, somehow managed to spend months or even years plotting to commit one of the largest mass murders in US history without leaving a trail for investigators to follow, and without alerting any of his family and close friends that anything was amiss, and without anyone figuring out that he was a "gun nut." No one has EVER been able to do this.

Then, after all of that, when the FBI, the local cops, the ATF, and every other police agency you can think of begin to investigate the shooting, they handle the investigation with so much incompetence, that they can't even establish who was in the room, or when he even checked into the room. This is the same FBI that arrested Tim McVeigh less than an hour after the Oklahoma City bombing.

2 That we are all getting played. The FBI and police know more than they are letting on, and are covering up key facts in this crime. The question is: Why? Who is playing us? The shooter? The cops and FBI? Or someone else? and to what end? This explanation creates more questions than answers.

This is fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.