The revelation raises further questions about the Secret Service’s planning to secure areas outside the perimeter, as well as police’s failure to respond quickly enough to multiple early warnings of suspicious activity. In a video analysis on Monday, The Washington Post reported that bystanders at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, called local police to say they saw a man climbing to the roof of a building. Video posted to social media shows one man yelling “Cops! Cops!” while another man points toward the building. “He’s on the roof!” a woman says.
The Secret Service official’s testimony highlights growing tension between the agency and local authorities over the fact that the perpetrator had a clear view of the incident. While the Secret Service was in charge of overall security planning, the agency said it relied on local police in areas outside the security perimeter. The Agourville building was not inside the perimeter, and members of the public had to pass through metal detectors before entering.
Secret Service officials said the sniper team inside the building was from Beaver County, which borders Butler County, where Saturday’s rally was held. Local officials said it’s common for SWAT teams from neighboring counties to be dispatched to provide extra security at large events throughout western Pennsylvania.
The Beaver County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the county’s SWAT team was at the rally Saturday but declined to release additional information, citing the ongoing investigation by state and federal authorities. “We are proud of the heroic actions taken by our officers,” the Beaver County District Attorney’s Office said in a written statement Tuesday.
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said in an interview that all of his district’s SWAT teams were within the secured area. “The Secret Service was in charge, so it was their responsibility to ensure the security of the venue and the surrounding area. I think that’s common sense. That’s their job,” he told The Washington Post.
“In my opinion, when they blame local law enforcement, they’re just shifting the blame where it’s not their fault,” he added.
Local media outlet The Beaver Countyian reported Monday that there was a counter-sniper inside a building outside the event’s security perimeter. According to the paper, Beaver County police officers alerted their command center that they had seen a man with a rangefinder — a device that helps estimate distance — before the shootout began.
According to officials, the Secret Service counter-sniper who shot and killed the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shooting at the suspect to determine if he was armed and posed a threat. Secret Service radio transmissions had indicated that local police had spotted or were searching for a suspicious man in the area of the building. The counter-sniper was a veteran sniper with legendary status within the Secret Service for his long-range accuracy.
The counter-shooter who shot Crooks opened fire when he saw Crooks raise his weapon, officials said. The counter-shooter killed Crooks with one shot, seconds after he fired at Trump, the official said.
The Secret Service’s advance security plans, to address one of the rally’s main risks — that someone would open fire from high ground outside the rally’s perimeter — had called for two Secret Service counter-sniper teams to be positioned in front of the crowd on the roofs of two barns behind Trump’s stage. Local counter-snipers stationed inside the Agr building were to “watch” and monitor the crowd from behind and outside the perimeter.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a television interview that aired Tuesday morning that one of the reasons the agency did not require officers to stand on the roof of the Agua Building was because of the building’s slope. “That building, in particular, has a sloped roof at the highest point, and for security reasons, you don’t want to have somebody standing on a sloped roof,” she said. “So the decision was made to secure the building from the inside.”
A Post analysis of video footage of the incident showed that the roof of the barn where the sniper team was stationed was steeper than the roof in Agulhville.
The risk of a gunman’s open line of sight has been a security concern the Secret Service has tried to address in planning for presidential public appearances since John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a rifleman in a Dallas skyscraper in 1963. Current and former Secret Service agents have expressed shock that a gunman was able to get so close to Trump, in what has been described as the Secret Service’s most serious security failure since the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
A Washington Post analysis of the video shows officers in black uniforms looking up at a rooftop in the Agourville building. Officer Crooks began firing two minutes and two seconds into the newly released video. The video begins with a male voice saying people are pointing at the rooftop. The analysis said the shooting began 86 seconds after the first audio attempt to call police. The analysis synchronized several pieces of footage based on the voice heard over a public address system of Trump as he addressed supporters at the Butler County Agricultural Fair.
The Post reported Sunday that the Secret Service is turning to local police in Beaver and Butler counties to bolster its specialized tactical teams.
Evan Hill, Aaron Shaffer and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.
