Three Beaver County police snipers were reportedly stationed inside the building used by the shooter in Saturday's assassination attempt on Donald Trump, a local law enforcement officer with 'direct knowledge' of the incident tells CBS News' Anna Schecter, and as first reported by the Beaver Countian.
It gets worse...
A sniper, stationed on the second floor providing overwatch, saw the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, outside the building and looking up at the roof. He then walked away, returned, whipped out his phone, when one of the snipers took the first of two pictures of him.
Crooks then took out a rangefinder - at which point the sniper radioed to a command post. Crooks then disappeared again and came back a third time with a backpack. The snipers called in once again with information that he had a backpack and that he (Crooks) was walking toward the back of the building.
By the time other officers came for backup, he had climbed on top of the building and was positioned above and behind the snipers inside the building, the officer said.
Two other officers who heard the sniper's call tried to get onto the roof. State police started rushing to the scene, but by that time, a Secret Service sniper had already killed Crooks, the officer said. -CBS News
So - law enforcement had eyes-on the shooter the entire time, took pictures of him, notified their command post - and nothing was done until Crooks shot Trump, at which point Secret Service snipers returned fire and killed him.
According to local TV station WPXI, officers on the ground spotted Crooks nearly 30 minutes before he fired at Trump.
Channel 11′s Nicole Ford confirmed that Beaver County’s ESU team had eight members at the rally, including snipers and spotters. According to Ford’s sources, one of them noticed a suspicious man on a roof near the rally at 5:45 p.m., called it in and took a picture of the person. We have learned from our sources the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. We’re told it’s not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point.
According to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken.
26 minutes after the second picture of Crooks was taken by law enforcement and the information called in, shots were fired from the roof of the American Glass Research building. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks.
So the local police command had roughly 30 minutes to coordinate with the US Secret Service on the suspicious guy with a rangefinder, who they then let climb the roof and attempt to assassinate Donald Trump.
Blame Game
The assassination attempt has pitted the USSC against local law enforcement - with agency director Kimberly Cheatle telling ABC News on Monday that it was the local police's responsibility to secure the building that was outside the USSC perimeter.
"There was local police in that building – there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building," said Cheatle.
One former Secret Service agent, however, took issue with Cheatle placing so much blame on local law enforcement - telling CNN: "The Service is responsible for everything, not just the inner perimeter. They should make sure all of this is covered."
"Officers inside a building – that’s not mitigating a high-ground vulnerability," the former agent continued.
According to Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, this isn't the snipers' fault.
"Whatever happened in Butler, this was not a failure of the local, state or federal officers on the ground who responded to the shots fired at former President Trump. They acted heroically and put their lives on the line to protect everyone at the event and we must recognize that," he said. "This is a failure at the management or command level who failed to secure an obvious weakness in the security of this event."
