Police in Pennsylvania have released video footage showing the chaotic moments before, during, and after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in July.
Butler Township Police released 12 video clips of body-worn camera and in-car camera video Thursday to Scripps News and other news outlets in response to public records requests. The township initially denied the Scripps News request before reversing course this week.
One clip appears to show the moments a police officer realized there was an armed man on the roof near the Trump rally moments before he opened fire. The shooting on July 13 left Trump and two of his supporters wounded, and killed retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, before the Secret Service shot and killed the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The video shows a Butler Township police officer being boosted by another officer to look on to the roof of the building where the gunman had taken a position.
The video released by police does not include audio during the section when the officer encountered Crooks. The video shows the officer quickly retreating from the roof and running toward his car to retrieve his gun. An in-car camera picked up the sound of eight gunshots about 40 seconds after the officer fell down from the roof.
Later, the officer can be heard telling other police, “I popped my head up here like an idiot by myself, dude. He turned around, I f***ing dropped.” Police said in a statement that Crooks pointed his rifle at the officer, but the gunman cannot be seen from the officer’s camera angle in the body-worn camera footage.
The officer is also heard suggesting that he was “calling out” that someone was on the roof, and asked, “Were we all on the same frequency?”
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Last week, acting Secret Service director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. acknowledged in a news conference that Secret Service countersnipers did not have access to radio traffic from local police, and likely did not know that there was an armed man on the nearby rooftop.
In other body-worn camera clips released Thursday, police can be heard expressing frustration that the area where the gunman opened fire was not better secured.
One officer standing outside the building can be heard telling another, “f***ing told the Secret Service, post a f***ing guy over here. I told them,f***ing, at the meeting on Tuesday.”
Rowe has called the Secret Service’s security measures a “failure,” and the circumstances surrounding the shooting are the subject of several federal investigations.
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