About 30 seconds ago Last month, former President Donald Trump was shot, a local police officer radioed that he saw a man with a gun. However, this information was never confirmed Secret Service because the agents were stationed at a different command post than their local counterparts and did not have access to the same radio traffic.
“It was unique,” Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said Friday.
“We need to rethink where we put our safe rooms, and that’s what we’re actually doing,” he said.
The revelation hit on one of the central mysteries since the July 13 assassination attempt — why Trump wasn’t removed from the scene after police spotted a gunman on the roof less than 150 yards away.
The would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, opened fire during Trump’s speech, injuring the former president’s ear, killing one person in the crowd and wounding two others.
The Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny since the incident.
The initial criticism was about the lack of security in the building used by the gunman. The Secret Service initially blamed local law enforcement, but later admitted that it was ultimately up to the agency to ensure the building was covered.
Earlier this week, Rowe acknowledged that there was a 30-second window from when police saw Crooks to when Crooks opened fire. On Friday, Rowe detailed the communications failures that day for the first time.
Secret Service personnel were in a command post with a member of the Pennsylvania State Police, while their local partners were in a completely separate location.
“It’s clear to me that we didn’t have access to certain information,” Rowe said. “It’s not because of anyone’s fault. It just so happened that there was a sense of urgency [on the radio, and] that could have been dropped radio traffic. We should do this better.”
At 5:45 p.m., about 15 minutes before Trump took the stage, a Butler County counter-sniper texted a Secret Service colleague two pictures of a suspicious man — later confirmed to be Crooks. Eight minutes later, Secret Service counter-snipers were alerted to a suspicious person lurking around the building Crooks eventually ascended.
But because Secret Service personnel in the field and at the command post did not have access to local police radio traffic, neither their counter-snipers nor their security detail had any idea the gunman was on the roof until after they opened fire, Rowe said.
Rowe said he ordered all agents in charge of field offices around the country to “reevaluate where we put our security rooms.”
“If a state or local unit creates a command post, maybe we should be in that room,” he said.
Former Chicago Police Department Deputy Chief Steve Georgas said he worked more than 250 assignments with the Secret Service in Chicago over more than a decade. Bringing local officers and Secret Service agents together is “absolutely vital” so there are no gaps in communication, he said. Georgas said this was standard during his tenure with the Secret Service.
“[The Secret Service] the so-called security room would always stand up. And we would always put an officer from the Chicago Police Department in that room,” Georgas said. “And its sole purpose is to close that communication gap so that every radio frequency that the state and local people work on is always in the security room on the missions that we work with the Secret Service. So that closed the loop that was there.”
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last month Hearing at Home after the attack and after a controversial attempt. Investigators are still working to determine Crooks’ motive.
Rowe applauded the actions of the Secret Service counter-sniper who killed the gunman. The sharpshooter fired a round that hit Crooks 15 1/2 seconds after the alleged killer’s first shot.
But Rowe said his agency takes full responsibility for the security breach.
“It was a mission failure,” he said. “Our agency’s sole responsibility is to make sure our advocates are not put in harm’s way. We failed to do that at Butler, and I’m working to make sure that failure doesn’t happen again.”