BUTLER, Pa. — A local Pennsylvania police officer says he told the Secret Service to secure the building where former President Trump’s would-be assassin fired off his rifle, newly released body cam footage suggests.
The footage, recorded from the bodycam of a Butler Township police officer, also suggests that shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks may have used a wooden pallet to scale the building before he allegedly tried to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee at a campaign rally last month.
About 13 minutes after Crooks was taken out by a sniper, the officer walks around the side of the AGR building and fumes to another officer that the Secret Service did not have agents on the structure.
“I f—ing told them they need to post the f—ing guys over here … the Secret Service,” the officer says. “I told them that f—ing Tuesday. I told them to f—ing post guys over here.”
“I f—ing told them they need to post the f—ing guys over here … the Secret Service. I told them that f—ing Tuesday. I told them to f—ing post guys over here.”
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Police stand over Thomas Crooks after he was shot and killed. (Butler Township Police Department)
“I thought you guys were on the roof,” another police officer, believed to be from the Butler City Police Department, can be heard saying.
“No, we were inside,” the Butler Township Police Department officer says.
The exchange appears to highlight the disorganized nature of the security in place for the rally that day, which has sparked various finger-pointing among the various agencies involved.
“I wasn’t even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof,” the Butler City Police Department officer can be heard saying. “Like, how the hell can you lose a guy walking back here if someone’s on the roof.”
“They were inside,” the officer responds. The video footage later shows two Secret Service agents inside the building.
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Crooks may have used a pallet to get on the roof. (Butler Township Police Department)
Speaking to another officer, he says, “I talked to the Secret Service guys, and they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re going to post guys over here.'”
A few minutes later, the Butler Township police officer speaks to a countersniper and reiterates his claims that he told the Secret Service to have agents at the venue.
“I told the Secret Service, post a f—ing guy over here. I told them that f—ing at the meeting on Tuesday.”
The footage also shows the officer arriving on the scene at around 18:12 p.m., about a minute after Crooks was shot dead by a countersniper. The officer is desperately looking to scale the building and asks a fellow officer if there was a ladder he could climb.
“No, he used that board right there probably,” the other officer says, with the video showing a stack of wooden pallets resting against the side of the building. It’s not clear if Crooks used those pallets to climb on top of the building. Previous reports revealed that Crooks had purchased a ladder at a local Home Depot, but no ladder was found at the scene.
The video also reveals the difficulty and frantic efforts police had trying to get onto the building.
The officer manages to hoist two countersnipers onto the roof by helping them onto a large storage shed, and they then use a pallet on the roof of the shed to access the roof. The pallet had initially been resting against the building next to the storage shed and could also have been used by Crooks.
The bodycam footage is one of several videos obtained by Fox News Digital on Thursday through a records request. In another video, one police officer scales the building but is confronted by Crooks and then falls to the ground.
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Crooks may have used this pallet to get on the roof. (Butler Township Police Department)
Officials say Crooks then got off his shots, grazing Trump’s ear and killing spectator Corey Comperatore.
The gunfire also wounded audience members David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They have both since returned home, with Dutch on Wednesday providing Fox News with an exclusive statement on the deadly incident.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of and reviewing the bodycam footage from July 13 that was recently released by local law enforcement,” the agency said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“The U.S. Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a U.S. Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”
Fox News’ Brooke Curto contributed to this report.
