In the days since a gunman tried to assassinate Donald Trump, a township in rural Pennsylvania has received a barrage of hate mail and angry phone calls blaming its officers for failing to keep the former president safe.
Now Butler Township Manager Tom Knights is pushing back. “They couldn’t be more wrong,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
Despite the dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement officers on the scene, Knights said it was four Butler Township officers assigned to traffic duty who bolted from their post and raced to confront the gunman, with one clinging to the roof where the would-be assassin was perched.
“Our officers acted instinctively, did their job, followed the training that they had,” Knights told NBC News.
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The gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, opened fire minutes into Trump’s speech, piercing the former president’s ear, killing one person in the crowd and injuring two others.
The attempt on Trump’s life, which missed only by inches, has prompted strong criticism of the Secret Service by law enforcement experts and members of both parties. It has also set off a wave of finger-pointing across multiple law enforcement agencies as to who was responsible for securing the building the gunman used.
The Secret Service has blamed local authorities, without naming specific agencies.
Knights said the township’s officers did everything they could to stop Crooks.
The officers were assigned to manage traffic Saturday afternoon outside the Trump rally at the Butler Farm Show, an outdoor venue. But they leapt into action when they heard a radio call about a suspicious person on the roof of a nearby building, Knights said. The officers converged on the building, owned by a glass research company, but couldn’t see anybody above, because they were too close.
“So two of the officers went to what appeared to be the lowest point from ground to roof,” Knights said. “One of the officers actually boosted the second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof.”
“When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he did in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon,” Knights said.
The gunman pointed his rifle at the officer, who was hanging on the edge of the roof. The officer ducked his head, lost his grip and fell about 8 feet to the ground, Knights said.
The two officers — the one who fell and the one who boosted him up — both got on their radios to report that there was a person on the roof with a weapon. Knights wasn’t clear on how long after that the shooter began firing at Trump.
The building the shooter managed to scale was less than 150 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking.
Knights said the building was identified as a “point of interest” in two security meetings prior to the weekend rally. “That was something they were going to be vigilant in planning for,” he said.
Knights said he wasn’t clear which agency was supposed to be guarding the building. Officers from several agencies were called in to provide security at the event. The Butler Township Police Department has 12 full-time patrol officers.
The Secret Service has said it was responsible for securing an inner perimeter. But the building was part of the outer perimeter and therefore left to local authorities to protect.
“There was local police in that building,” Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in an interview with ABC News on Monday night. “There was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”
Cheatle didn’t specify which agency she was referring to.
Knights said he looks forward to seeing a full investigation of what went wrong.
“The investigation will put a lot of light on how the entire event happened, how the entire situation happened,” Knights said. “And I would caution people to not make snap judgment, rash judgment, until such time as that investigation is completed.”
Stephanie Gosk reported from Butler Township; Rich Schapiro reported from New York.
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