EXCLUSIVELocal law enforcement fumes after Trump shooting debacle as Secret Service attempts to deflect blame: 'They threw us under the bus'
Anger is growing among law enforcement and local officials in Pennsylvania over what they see as the Secret Service's attempts to pass the buck on who was to blame for Saturday's assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
'They threw us under the bus,' one cop in Butler told DailyMail.com exclusively.
The fury is over Secret Service claims that anything outside the perimeter set up around Trump's rally in Butler was the responsibility of local law enforcement agencies.
'The Secret Service came out here more than a month ahead of time and met with all the local agencies. They tell us exactly what to do, exactly what they want and exactly how they want it. It's all on them,' he added.
Local officers have told DailyMail.com that the Secret Service left officers to patch up security holes at the event
Butler Township commissioner Edward Natali claimed the USSS had been 'covering their own backsides'
'If they say, 'We want 100 troopers out here' they get 100 troopers out here. We're not a bunch of cowboys out here doing whatever the hell we want.
'They're absolutely passing the buck.'
The officer spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his allegations against the federal agency charged with protecting ex-presidents like Trump.
But Butler Township commissioner Edward Natali was not so reticent to speak out.
Thomas Crooks, 20, opened fire on former President Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday
On Tuesday he accused the Secret Service of being 'uninformed, lying, or covering their own backsides' adding it was 'completely disgusting to see finger pointing has become the priority'.
'I want to say as clearly as can be said, the Butler Township Police Department had no security detail for this event. There were seven officers all assigned to traffic detail,' Commissioner Edward Natali, 59, wrote on Facebook.
'Anyone who says so, reports on it, implies it, etc... is uninformed, lying, or covering their own backsides.'
He called an unnamed Secret Service agent pointing the finger at local police 'a very transparent deflection'.
'It is completely disgusting to see that finger-pointing has become the priority, when we had four people shot, with one of the four fatally wounded,' Natali wrote.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has come under intense pressure since Trump's brush with death. She has been subpoenaed to appear before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Monday.
Speaking on ABC, in her first network interview since she presided over what has been described as the agency's most shocking security failure since the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, Cheatle admitted, 'It was unacceptable. And it's something that shouldn't happen again.'
Cheatle confirmed reports that snipers had not been placed on the roof of the AGR building on to which Crooks scrambled to take his shot because the roofs were sloped.
'There's a safety factor that would be considered putting somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building from inside,' she added.
Had the former president not turned his head at the last moment, the shot that clipped his ear would almost certainly have proved fatal
Trump pumped a fist at the crowd was husstled off the stage, surrounded by members of his Secret Service detail
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle has come under intense pressure since Trump's brush with death on Saturday
The current Butler law enforcement officer who spoke with DailyMail.com, dismissed Cheatle's words as 'excuses' and pointed to the security measures taken in 2020 when 15,000 people attended a rally for the former president at Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport – an operation overseen by the agency's previous director, the Trump-appointed James Murray.
The officer who was familiar with the event and those measures said, 'Back then they had so many snipers. They were all over the place. Everywhere you looked.
'It was the most secure place on the planet.
'And this time they only have four because of sloping roofs and they still try to pass the buck to the locals?'
The SWAT team from neighboring Beaver County provided two of the four sniper teams on Saturday – but a former top Beaver County law enforcement official told DailyMail.com that the idea of preventing snipers from setting up on a sloped roof was 'insane'.
'If my people were running the scene, there would have been someone on that roof,' the retired official said.
'The spotter team we've seen on TV that engaged the shooter, they were on a sloped roof. And I know when Vice President Pence came we posted on top of a building with a sloped roof,' they said.
'You put your sniper where the sniper needs to be.'
Secret Service officers whisked the former president to safety after he was hit in the right ear
The source said that Secret Service would have been directing local police at the event, and that it was likely their lack of communication or indecision that caused the delay in taking out Crooks.
'They would coordinate where everybody was going to be, what everybody was going to do. They provide the protocols,' the former top official said.
'I can't imagine anyone knowing he was on the roof without using force necessary to stop that from happening.
'It's a very small area. You're talking yelling 100 yards, or a radio or cell phone. So I don't understand what the disconnect was – whether they were told not to engage.'
They said that for previous visits to the area by then-Vice President Mike Pence, the Secret Service was similarly under-resourced.
'Everything was run by the Secret Service by their protocols, but they were always understaffed. They always heavily relied on the locals,' the source said.
The last picture of would-be assassin Thomas Crooks, taken less than an hour before he was shot and killed. It was circulated to law enforcement as a suspicious sighting at the Trump rally
Snipers set up before the arrival of former president Trump on a rooftop overlooking the campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show
'It was frustrating because we had hundreds of hours of overtime that we had to pay for all the different levels of police and government, and none of it was ever reimbursed.
'But you do it for the protection of the community.
'One of the things that made you angry was they come in and make all these demands,' the top former official added.
'They wanted a police motorcade and ambulance. But they had no way to get the resources.
'The team leader did not have the resources that he needed, and that was for guarding a sitting Vice President.'
The ex-official said that each branch of law enforcement would be on different radio frequencies, and communication may have broken down between local SWAT and the Secret Service command.
'We did not have access to the radios that the Secret Service had and they didn't have access to ours. And the state police are also on separate frequencies,' the source said.
'You'd have to have one of our people embedded with the Secret Service so they could communicate what we were receiving and seeing. We'd have somebody standing beside their boss at their headquarters, relaying information.'
Trump was seen wearing the bandage on his wounded ear when he appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday
One Butler officer said that the patrolman who came face to face with Crooks n the roof fell and broke his ankle
Beaver County bore the brunt of filling in gaps for the Secret Service at Saturday's rally, having the largest SWAT team in the region.
Sources said the team has around 40 officers, including snipers, forced entry teams and a dozen hostage negotiators, who all regularly train and work with the ATF, FBI and state police.
The anonymous Butler officer revealed to DailyMail.com that a Butler Township Police Department patrolman who came face to face with Crooks and has been hailed a 'hero' by the force's acting chief, did not 'retreat' but attempted to reach for his own gun only to fall and injure himself.
He said, 'People keep saying he should have shot him, he should have stopped him, but you have to understand that officer was given a boost up by another officer and was using both hands to pull himself up over the edge of that roof to see what was going on, when he's confronted by this guy pointing a gun at him.
'He reached for his gun, lost his balance and fell and broke his ankle.'
