A Pennsylvania police officer should be considered a hero for interrupting Thomas Crooks as the would-be assassin lined up his shot at former President Donald Trump on Saturday, according to a Pennsylvania sheriff.
Moments before Crooks fired at Trump, a Butler Township police officer, hoisted by another officer, poked his head over the edge of the rook where Crooks was waiting to take his shot. Crooks responded to the interruption by pointing his rifle at the officer, who dropped to the ground and did not try to stop Crooks.
Crooks then fired until he was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said by interrupting Crooks, the officer — whose name he did not use — was a hero because in the moment Crooks fired at Trump, Trump had turned his head, according to the New York Post. As county sheriff, Slupe does not oversee the Butler Township force.
“Can you imagine 10 seconds before that? That the president was looking straight ahead and where that bullet could have potentially landed,” Slupe said.
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“Right now, (the shooter is) training on the president. These guys breach the roof,” Slupe said. “So he turns around and potentially eliminates that threat.
“The officer is like, ‘I’m dead or I drop. I drop.’ He turns back around,” he said, speaking of Crooks.
Slupe mocked critics of the officer.
“When someone points a gun at you and you can’t get to your weapon, you tell them a**holes online that they are Superman,” Slupe said. “Like ‘I’ll just pull a gun out, and they can shoot at me.’”
Was this cop a hero?
Slupe said, the few seconds used up by Crooks turning to scare off the officer were a matter of life and death.
“Now timing is everything. … He turns around and at this point in the speech, obviously as we all know, the president is looking way back to his right, and he gets hit on the ear,” he said. Trump turned his head as Crooks fired, meaning the bullet nipped Trump’s ear instead of landing in his head.
“If I’m interrupted and I move my gun, you are going to have to reassess that whole situation at this point, so yes, you can make a case that those two officers saved the president’s life,” Slupe said.
Slupe said he is not trying to sugarcoat a bad situation.
“Was there a failure? Yes. You’d have to be stupid not to admit there was a failure,” he said.
Butler Township Manager Tom Knights has also defended the local police, according to NBC.
“Our officers acted instinctively, did their job, followed the training that they had,” Knights said, noting that Butler Township cops were supposed to be managing traffic but rushed to the building where Crooks was lying in wait after hearing a radio call about s suspicious individual.
“So two of the officers went to what appeared to be the lowest point from ground to roof,” Knights said. “One of the officers actually boosted the second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof.”
“When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he did in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon,” Knights said, then dropped eight feet to the ground when Crooks pointed his rifle at him.
Knights said the building used by Crooks had been identified in pre-rally briefings as a “point of interest.”
“That was something they were going to be vigilant in planning for,” he said, adding he did not know which agency was assigned to watch the building.
The Secret Service has said local agencies were detailed to protect the building from which shots were fired. That has angered Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger, according to The Washington Post.
“Secret Service was in charge, and so it was their responsibility to make sure that the venue and the surrounding area was secure,” he said. “That’s common sense, I think. That’s their job.”
“For them to blame local law enforcement is them passing the blame when they hold the blame, in my opinion,” he said.
