A former SWAT commander expressed outrage at the “brazenness” of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who blamed a “sloping roof” for the failure to position snipers at the building where suspect Thomas Crooks opened fire at former President Trump’s rally on Saturday.
Gene Petrino, a former SWAT commander for the Plantation, Florida, Police Department for 26 years and an expert on mass shootings, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that Cheatle’s “sloping roof theory” is “shocking.”
He added that the venue in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Crooks killed one man and wounded three, including Trump, offered an obvious vantage point for a sniper to scout.
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On Saturday, July 13, 2024, a police sniper returned fire after gunfire erupted while Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle maintained that no snipers were stationed on the roof of the building Crooks had climbed due to “security concerns” posed by the sloping roof, but SWAT expert Gene Petrino noted that the sniper who shot Crooks was on the sloping roof. (AP Photo/Jean J. Puskar)
“That building in particular has a sloped roof on the highest point,” Cheatle said in an interview. ABC News“So, you know, the safety factors of not wanting people on a sloping roof were taken into consideration and the decision was made to protect the building from the inside.”
“The site plan would have identified that roof as a major vulnerability,” Petrino said, “but there was no one there to protect it.”
A blurry cellphone video shows, from a rally-goer’s perspective, Thomas Matthew Crooks crawling across a rooftop moments before attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump. (DJ Lafley)
“It’s brazen to say there’s a problem with the sloped roof when her men are already on it,” he said, referring to publicly released photos of other Secret Service snipers positioned on nearby sloped roofs.
Petrino also said he was troubled by the apparent lack of drone surveillance of the rally, and questioned why a sniper wasn’t stationed at a water tower that was visible in aerial photos of the area around the rally and “had a vantage point overlooking all the rooftops.”
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On Saturday, July 13, 2024, Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania when gunfire erupted and a police sniper returned fire. (AP Photo/Jean J. Puskar)
Two FBI agents are searching the roof of AGR International, adjacent to the Butler Fairgrounds where suspect Matthew Thomas Crooks opened fire on former President Trump on Saturday. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
“That shooter should not have been able to even get onto the roof, let alone fire a shot,” Petrino said.
“This is a major security failure,” he continued. “Cheatle is responsible. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the higher-ups.”
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Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump is hurriedly escorted off the stage during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Petrino said the security team’s response after the shooting left him wondering if they “weren’t properly funded or they lacked the experience.”
“It was awful… It’s just bizarre. Normally if you have six-foot principals, you’d have six-foot people,” he said of the size of the agents onstage.
“You’re going to undermine your position as headmaster. [Trump] “He should have walked off the stage immediately, but he didn’t,” Petrino said. “He was in control of the team, and the team should have been in control of him.”
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“From a political standpoint, it worked really well for him to be able to whip up the crowd and show that he was OK… [but] He should have been thrown off the stage,” Petrino said.
