New videos from local officials in Pennsylvania emphasize how close officers were to preventing the shooting of former president Donald Trump last month.
Several hours of videos from body and dashboard cameras, released Thursday by Butler Township, show officers rushing to the scene of a manufacturing building outside the security perimeter minutes before the shooting. Soon, a man perched on the roof of that building with an AR-style rifle would fire on a nearby Trump rally, killing one man and wounding others including Trump.
The videos further reveal the confusion, overlapping radio traffic and challenges officers had in communicating at the large, open-air event.
One pivotal video shows the moments just before 6:11 p.m. as a local officer is boosted up to peer over the edge of the metal roof of the American Glass Research building where Thomas Matthew Crooks was perched.
After spotting Crooks to his left, the unidentified officer quickly drops down and sprints to his squad car in the parking lot to retrieve a long gun.
Thirty seconds later, the first of eight shots ring out.
“I was this close, bro, and he turned around on me,” he says to another officer in the parking lot a minute later, both with guns drawn.
"Where's he at?" the other officer says.
"He's straight up!"
Five minutes passed from the moment the officer eyes Crooks to when officers in tactical gear successfully make it onto the roof. The videos capture the chaotic scene as some officers race inside the building and others look for anything that would help them scale its exterior walls.
The officer who originally spotted Crooks spent most of those five minutes on the ground alongside other officers, standing first behind his squad car and then in front of the building's entrance, describing to tactical teams what he saw.
“He’s laying down on the next building over,” the out-of-breath officer says. “He’s got glasses, long hair… I climbed the wall, popped my head right in front of him.” The officer says the man had a bookbag and an "AR," the rifle.
One officer, with the help of another, hoists himself onto a plastic Craftsman storage shed next to the building and leans a wood pallet against the wall as if to climb it, but does not do so. Others scream for somebody to fetch a ladder.
The officer who originally saw Crooks warns the others climbing up to be careful: "Watch out because he can come right down on you over there!"
Another minute passes. Some officers remain confused about which roof the shooter is on.
"This building!" yells the officer who had boosted himself up. "The left one! Left side! The first one! That one!"
Finally, an officer in tactical gear manages to climb up.
"Let me see your hands!" he roars.
But by then, a sniper from afar has already taken aim. A stream of blood is seen running down the sloped metal from Crooks' body. It is 6:16 p.m.
Acknowledging the breakdowns
Federal officials have testified in Congress that the local officials relayed they were monitoring a suspicious person minutes before the former president was shot. It wasn’t until the local officer spotted the shooter with a rifle that they escalated the risk to an imminent threat.
More:Trump's would-be assassin had little time to prepare – and left little trace of plot
Interoperability and collaboration between Secret Service and local police has become a flashpoint in the review of the shooting.
Butler Township police declined to comment Thursday evening.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that the agency “is aware of and reviewing the bodycam footage from July 13 that was recently released by local law enforcement.”
“The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a U.S. Secret Service failure,“ Guglielmi said, “and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”
In dramatic testimony before Congress late last month, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald L. Rowe, Jr. did not try to defend the agency’s security posture before the shooting, including coverage of the building that Crooks used to fire off eight shots.
"What I saw made me ashamed," Rowe said in his testimony before a joint hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee. “I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured."
Rowe has also stressed that the federal agency would in no way try to pass any blame on to local, county and state police, since overall protection of the rally is the Secret Service’s responsibility.
Rowe said he has ordered expanded use of unmanned aerial systems to help detect threats on roofs and other elevated positions going forward. He said he has also directed resources to facilitate communications with state and local security partners.
Rowe took over as acting director of the service after Kimberly Cheatle resigned from the role on July 23, following mounting pressure from lawmakers and many in the public.
Confusion at the scene
In the footage released Thursday, audio timestamped at 6:11 p.m. plays a volley of three shots, then a quick succession of more shots, similar to the way interim U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe described Crooks' assassination attempt at a briefing last week.
The FBI has determined that the shooter surveyed the rally site at 11 a.m. on July 13, a Saturday, drove home to pick up his rifle and arrived back at the site at 3:45. He parked his car and flew a drone over the rally from 3:50 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Shortly later at 5 p.m., local law enforcement spotted him and tagged him as suspicious near the AGR building. They lost sight of him until 5:30, when SWAT officers noticed him using a range finder.
The FBI believes the shooter climbed air conditioning equipment to get on the metal roof. He then was spotted by the local officer in the video at 6:11 p.m.
Within 25 seconds, he fired eight shots.A Secret Service counter-sniper team then fatally shot him in the head.
On the rooftop soon after, as he stood over Crooks' dead body, the officer who originally saw him told other officers he had tried to relay the shooter's position via radio.
“I was ... calling out, bro ... On top of the roof,” he says in the video. “Were you not on the same frequency?”
Less than an hour after the shooting, local police already were second-guessing how Trump was in a position to be shot even after concerns were raised about the suspicious man.
“When I saw someone running across the roof they probably should have taken Trump off the stage,” one local officer tells another. “But it’s not my call.”
In another video, local police question why the roof didn't have coverage from the Secret Service.
"I ... told them they need to post guys ... over here," the officer says.
"Who?" another officer asks.
"The Secret Service," the first officer replies. "I told them that ... Tuesday."
Rick Jervis of USA TODAY contributed.
