Body camera footage from a police officer who responded to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month in Pennsylvania shows the intra-cop quarrels in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
The video shows the officer with the body camera running through a field toward a building in the area where shots had been fired at Trump. He passes someone holding a Trump flag and keeps running through a parking lot, his gun flashing in the periphery of his camera.
“Is he hit?” he asked another officer standing outside the building.
They replied, “I’m not sure.”
Video footage from body cameras on Butler Township Police Department officers, obtained by The Intercept, shed light on the chaos among law enforcement officials responding to the assassination attempt. The videos confirm previous reporting that a lack of communication and coordination between federal, state, and local police led to confusion at the rally and reflected insufficient preparation. The Butler police, for their part, had not had a chief for a month leading up to the attack.
The footage also shows in real time law enforcement officials’ frustration in the moments just after the shooting and provides insight into how police respond in emergencies and how little they are actually able to do in an active shooter situation. The videos document the frantic nature of the response, including police asking minutes after gunfire erupted why no officers were posted on the building used by the shooter.
Additional body camera footage shows one officer telling his colleagues minutes after the shooting that he warned the Secret Service well ahead of the rally to post agents at the building used by the shooter. Other video footage from the immediate aftermath shows a sergeant making phone calls to make sure that his family and children, who had attended the rally, got out OK.
In a statement to The Intercept, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the agency was aware that local police had released the footage and reiterated its support for local agencies that supported the response on the day of the rally.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of and reviewing the bodycam footage from July 13 that was recently released by local law enforcement,” he said. “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.” (Butler Township Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“I Fucking Told the Secret Service”
The moments just after police encountered the shooter and later, the moment of gunfire, unfolded amid chaos as officers from different agencies scrambled to try to get onto the roof.
One Butler Township police officer started to help other law enforcement teams climb onto a plastic shed to access the roof, cupping his hands to boost them up amid worries that the shed would collapse. Eventually, a ladder was found. Soon after they realized the shooter had already been taken down, the officers started coming down off the roof.
At least 8 minutes after the gunfire, a Secret Service agent walked up to the back of the building where the police officers were standing.
“Is the shooter down?” he asked. “I don’t want to split hairs here, but is he a ‘shooter’? Did he have a weapon?” the Secret Service agent asked, using air quotes around the word “shooter.”
“That was the report,” the Butler police officer responded.
A few minutes later, as police teams scattered around the building debriefed on what happened, two Butler officers and the Secret Service agent stood looking at the storage shed. “Is that how he got up?” one police officer asked. “I have no idea,” the other said. The Secret Service agent used the ladder to go up on the roof.
“I fucking told them they need to post the guys fucking over here,” the first officer said to his colleague. “I told them that — the Secret Service — I told them that fucking Tuesday. I told them to post fucking guys over here.”
“I thought you guys were on the roof?” the other cop responded.
“No, we’re inside.”
The officer walked around the building and encountered another officer. “I wasn’t even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof,” the other officer said. “I thought that’s how we — like how the hell can you lose a guy walking back there if someone was on the roof?”
“Why were we not on the roof?” another officer is heard asking.
“Because I thought we were gonna post guys over here,” the first officer said. “I talked to the Secret Service guys and they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re gonna post guys over here.’” The officers repeatedly discussed how the shooter might have accessed the roof.
Other video from the minutes before, during, and after the shooting shows a police officer notifying other officers that there is someone on the roof of the building. The Butler Township Police Department redacted sound from the video clip so it’s unclear what he says to the officers. He pointed to the roof, and two other officers ran around the side of the building to get a better view.
The first officer walked back into the parking lot to get a line of sight to the top of the roof before returning back to the corner of the building and training his gun on the roof. A few minutes later, the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit team arrived on the scene and tried to access the building.
The police opened the door to the building as emergency services officers entered to discuss the situation with SWAT members already on the scene. One SWAT officer said that an officer who climbed onto the roof suffered lacerations on his hands from the ladder and might need minor stitches. (Emergency services team members told ABC News last month that they were supposed to meet with the Secret Service on-site when they arrived before the rally, but that the meeting never took place.)
“What the fuck,” the officer said again, partially to himself. He walked up to another emergency services team member and pulled him close. He lowered his voice and told the first responder again that he had warned the Secret Service to post people at the site the shooter accessed.
“I fucking told the Secret Service, post a fucking guy over here,” he said. “I told them that fucking at the meeting Tuesday.”
As a group of officers gathered and discussed what happened, the first officer turned off his body camera.
“My Kids Were in There”
Another clip from a sergeant’s body cam shows him yelling at bystanders to clear the scene just minutes after the shooting. Witnesses told him they saw the shooter go down. He relayed the information over his radio: “I have witnesses that think that he is down, but we have not confirmed.” The sergeant panted as he walked around asking other bystanders if they needed a medic. After he confirmed that one suspect was down, he radioed that they needed to secure the rest of the area.
Then, the sergeant called a woman. “Get the fuck out of there, I’m OK. Get out of there,” he said. “Get everybody together and get out of there and get in the house, and I am OK.”
A few minutes later, he made another call to ask someone to check on his children after he sent them home from the rally. He added that he hadn’t been able to get hold of his brother and that law enforcement wasn’t sure if there were other shooters on the scene.
“My kids were in there,” he yelled to another officer. “They got separated, I’m trying to get them home.”
After it was clear that the shooter was down, officers started discussing how to handle the mass of people rushing away from the scene of the rally. The sergeant radioed to ask if there were any patrol dogs available.
“Just for standby, any area would be great. I don’t know what this crowd’s gonna do,” he told the person on the radio.
Another officer drove up and handed him a bottle of water. “Holy fuck, dude,” the sergeant said. The second officer told him to sit in the squad car where there was air conditioning.
“I’m good, man,” he said, before turning off his body camera.