WASHINGTON (AP) — Communication breakdowns with local law enforcement officials during a July campaign rally hampered the effectiveness of the Secret Service. Former President Donald Trump Shot and wounded, chances were missed to stop the gunman who fired from an unprotected rooftop, according to a report released Friday.
A five-page document summarizing the key conclusions of a yet-to-be-finalized Secret Service report Layered and widespread failures It was a rally Trump attended before the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania He was hit in the ear by a gun.
Ronald Rowe Jr. said the lack of clear direction from the Secret Service to local law enforcement, the failure to fix visual impairments on the rally grounds, left Trump open to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents. , the agency’s executive director.
While the botched response has been well-documented through congressional testimony, news media hearings and other public statements, the summary document released Friday represents the Secret Service’s most formal effort to catalog the mistakes of the day and comes amid a new review of the agency that follows. A man who authorities say followed Trump on a Florida golf course was arrested Sunday.
“This was a failure of the United States Secret Service. It is important to hold the July 13 failures to account and apply the lessons learned to ensure that such failures do not happen again,” Rove said at a press conference announcing the summary.
The report describes a series of “communication lapses” before the shooting 20-year-old Thomas Matthew CrooksHe was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper who fired eight rounds in Trump’s direction from the roof of a building less than 150 yards from where Trump was speaking. The building was identified as a potential hazard prior to the event, Rowe said, but officials did not take appropriate steps to correct potential problems.
“Line-of-sight issues were acknowledged but not properly mitigated. Issues arose on the day of the visit regarding visibility concerns, but were not escalated to supervisors,” Rowe said. “While some members of the advanced team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others, which led to breaches of security protocols.”
Among other problems: Some local police in the area were unaware of the existence of two communications centers, meaning the Secret Service was not receiving their radio transmissions.
Law enforcement relies more on cellphones than Secret Service radio frequencies to communicate sensitive information. As authorities searched for Crooks before the shooting, details were “scrambling or fragmented through mobile/cellular devices” rather than being sent through the Secret Service’s own network.
“Employees failed to radio a description of the assailant to all federal personnel at the Butler site or vital information from local law enforcement about a suspect on the roof of the AGR complex. service personnel,” the statement said. AGR International Inc. operates a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where the rally took place.
That breakdown was particularly troubling for Trump’s security detail, which “didn’t realize how much attention state and local law enforcement paid in the minutes before an attack to locate a suspicious subject.” If they had known, the report said, they may have made the decision to transfer Trump while the search for the gunman was underway.
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The report raises more serious questions about why law enforcement officers weren’t stationed on the roof that Crooks climbed on before the shooting.
A local tactical team was stationed on the second floor of a building on the campus where Crooks opened fire. Several law enforcement agencies questioned the effectiveness of the group’s stance, and the report said there had been “no follow-up discussion” about replacing it. There was no discussion with the Secret Service about placing a team on the roof, even though snipers from local law enforcement agencies were “not obviously opposed to the location.”
A tactical team operating on the second floor of the building had not contacted the Secret Service prior to the rally. Unbeknownst to the Secret Service, the group was brought in by the local police department to help with the event, the report said.
The Secret Service understood early on that the rally site chosen by Trump’s staff was a security challenge because it would best accommodate “a large number of participants.” However, the report said on July 13 that no security measures had been taken to address those concerns, and that the Secret Service did not have detailed knowledge of local law enforcement support.
The executive summary of the report did not identify specific individuals to blame or indicate whether any employees had been disciplined, although the Associated Press previously reported that at least five Secret Service agents had been placed on modified duty. The director at the time, Kimberly Seittle, He resigned more than a week after the shootingShe said that she took full responsibility for the mistake.
The investigation by the Secret Service is one of several by Congress and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.
Rowe said the July shooting and Sunday’s episode, when 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Ruth was arrested after Secret Service agents found a gun poking through bushes on a West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course where Trump was playing, underscored the need. For a paradigm shift in how the organization protects public officials.
Trump is getting “higher levels” of security and the Secret Service’s response in Florida is an example of the procedures they have to go through.
