Butler Township released new body camera video Thursday from the day a man tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump, showing the moment police confronted the gunman before he opened fire on a crowd in Pennsylvania and includes police alerting the Secret Service to the building. vulnerability.
In one video, a Butler Township officer is hoisted onto the roof of a building near the July 13 rally, minutes before Trump’s speech.
The officer appears to peek his head over the roof before quickly falling to the ground and running to a nearby police vehicle, the video shows. The shooting cannot be seen in this bodycam video angle and there is no sound.
NBC News previously reported that at this point, the officer was confronted by the shooter, Thomas Crooks, who pointed his gun at the officer, causing the officer to fall to the ground, according to Butler City Manager Tom Knights.
Later in the video, the officer appears to confirm the encounter, saying, “F —— This close, dude, he turned right on me.”
Authorities later determined that the shooter was on top of a building next to the Butler Farm Show — where Trump was giving his speech — which was about 148 yards from Trump and outside the security zone set up by the Secret Service that day.
Crooks fired eight shots, hitting Trump in the ear, killing one protester and seriously injuring two others. Crooks was shot and killed by snipers in seconds.
A later part of the same video clip shows a Butler Township officer jumping back onto the roof. That video shows Crooks’ bloodied body in handcuffs after being shot and killed by Secret Service snipers.
“Before you mothers —— I came here, I put my head in here like a f ——- idiot myself …” The officer said in a clip of captured radio traffic. “I yelled, ‘bro, on the roof, bro,’ Were you on the same frequency?”
The unidentified SWAT team member then said he was “pissed off” because he “couldn’t … find him,” apparently referring to Crooks.
In another clip released Thursday, an unidentified Butler Township officer said about 10 minutes after Trump was shot that he told the Secret Service about the building’s vulnerability a day before the rally.
The officer is heard saying that he “told them they had to send the guys over here. I told them that.”
When asked “who” he said, the officer replied, “Secret Service.”
The officer said he told members of the Secret Service on July 9 — four days before the July 13 incident — to “send guys over here,” referring to the building where the shooter was found.
“How the hell can you lose a man walking around here?” the officer said.
When asked if the officer’s team was on the roof, the officer said no and said the team was inside. In the sound, you can hear back and forth about the placement of people.
The officer added that the Secret Service assured officials earlier this week that “we’re sending guys over here.” He doesn’t specify the location in the video.
U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that the agency is reviewing the video.
“The United States Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners who acted courageously in the search for the shooter that day,” Guglielmi said. “The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was a failure by the United States Secret Service, and we are reviewing and updating our security policies and procedures to ensure such a tragedy does not happen again.”
Pennsylvania State Police have said they identified Crooks as “suspicious” before the attack.
The Secret Service has been criticized for its handling of the incident and any warnings before Trump took the stage, how long it took to get the former president off the stage, and its preparation before the rally.
Amid the meltdown, the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned. Days later, the acting head of the Secret Service told a Senate committee hearing that Secret Service agents could be fired if found to have violated protocol that day.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
