A Beaver County police officer warned a command center of seeing a man with a rangefinder before former president Donald Trump was shot on Saturday. The officer had also warned the man was scoping out the roof of the building he was stationed in as a counter-sniper, and that the man returned with a backpack before ultimately scaling the building.
Despite all of those warnings, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park was able to continue in his plan to become Trump’s would-be assassin.
BeaverCountian.com spoke with multiple local law enforcement sources about security provided by agencies from Beaver, Butler, and Washington counties during Saturday’s rally. They claim a lack of manpower and “extremely poor planning” put the former president’s life in grave danger.
While the United State Secret Service provided security within a secure perimeter of the rally, local law enforcement agencies were tasked with securing areas outside of magnetometers that screen rallygoers as they entered the venue.
Contrary to reports in several national news outlets, officers say the building just outside of a security perimeter established by Secret Service was in fact occupied by law enforcement.
“There were three counter-snipers located in the building that the shooter eventually used to take shots at Trump,” one officer told BeaverCountian.com.
Officers spoke to BeaverCountian.com on condition they not be quoted by name due to ongoing investigations by the Pennsylvania State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigations.
A security operations plan had placed each of the three counter-snipers inside of the building looking out of windows toward the rally, with none stationed on its roof. Due to a lack of manpower, the men did not have spotters assigned to them, as would be standard operating procedure.
Among those municipal counter-snipers was Sergeant Gregory Nicol of the Monaca Borough Police Department. Nicol was providing security at the Trump rally in his role as a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit (ESU), the county’s equivalent of a SWAT team.
