Shortly after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a rally for former president Donald Trump, a local police officer in Pennsylvania complained to a colleague that he had warned the Secret Service in advance about the need to secure the area the gunman used, according to police body-cam video released Thursday.
“I f---ing told them they needed to post guys f---ing over there. I told them that f---ing Tuesday,” the officer can be heard telling a colleague.
The video, one of 12 provided to The Washington Post in response to a records request, shows the confusion and frustration among law enforcement in the aftermath of the shooting, underscoring a key question at the core of multiple investigations into the Secret Service’s most serious security failure in decades: Why didn’t anyone secure the roof of a building so close to the rally site?
“Why weren’t we on the roof?” an officer in one of the videos asks a colleague. Another officer responds that “the Secret Service guys, they were like, ‘yeah, no problem, we’re gonna post guys over here.’”
A spokesman for the Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
