Trump assassination attempt: Butler, Pennsylvania town manager defends police amid response 'misconception'

The Butler Township manager, Thomas Knights, defended local police officers' response to the assassination attempt against former President Trump at his rally on Saturday.

Knights' comments come amid some sparring between the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the Fraternal Order of Police as both federal and local law enforcement take criticism from the public for being unable to stop the would-be Trump assassin before he fired, though Knights says that tension has not "spilled over into" Butler.

"I think there's some misconception about overall response. I can only speak for our officers transitioning from what was supposed to be a primary traffic control assistance to where it became … a suspicious person," the township manager, who supervises all Butler department heads including the police chief, told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday. 

"I think our law enforcement did exactly what training taught them to do. … How subsequent events played out, that's another thing for what I hope to be a really complete report on the incident to educate everybody." 

Knights added that to his knowledge, the USSS has not been in "any direct communication" with Butler officials.

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"There are ongoing interviews with all law enforcement that were at the event, regardless of what their roles were. So we're all just waiting on that information to be put together into one public report," he explained. 

The assassination attempt left 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer firefighter, dead after he was shot while protecting his wife and daughters from gunfire. Two others, 57-year-old David Dutch of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and 74-year-old James Copenhaver of Moon Township, Pennsylvania, are critically wounded. The shooting has prompted questions about how the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was able to access the roof of a nearby building with Trump in his line of sight.

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The FBI has been interviewing members of local law enforcement agencies since the Saturday shooting. Knights described the interview process as "fact-finding" that will be conducted throughout this week and possibly beyond.

Knights also gave further insight into the moments officers realized there was a suspicious person on the rooftop and how they responded before shots rang out around 6:11 p.m.

"Once the suspicious individual was identified as being in the vicinity of the building, our police, who were primarily assigned to traffic duty and traffic control, did … because of the proximity, move towards that building."

— Thomas Knights

All law enforcement at the rally were notified about a suspicious person "somewhere on the ground," Knights said.

Then, rally attendees began pointing toward a suspicious, armed person on the roof of a "light manufacturing office building" that Knights described as "vacant" at the time of the rally. 

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He is unaware of any law enforcement officers or agencies who may have been tasked specifically with monitoring that building, which was not technically inside the rally area but next to it. The building is owned by AGR International Inc., a manufacturing company.

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"Once the suspicious individual report came out, and our police arrived in the immediate area of the building, they did do a perimeter search — were unable to see the person on top of the building from the vantage point," Knights explained. "So one of our other police officers … literally boosted one of our [other officers] up high enough in the air to grab hold of the edge of the roof."

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The officer was able to pull himself up so that his "head was above the roof" because there was no other way to access the roof at that moment. The approximate distance from the ground to the edge of the roof where the officer got hold is 12 feet, Knights said.

The officer "did observe an individual on the roof," who "was identified as having a weapon" and "did point that firearm at our officer," Knights said. 

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The officer took a defensive position from where he was hanging on the edge of the roof, ducked his head, and lost his grip, at which point he fell "approximately eight feet" to the ground and sprained his ankle, the township manager explained. 

"Both the lifting officer and the prone officer both called in [and] identified the individual on the roof as being armed."

— Thomas Knights

Knights said the gap of time and unknowns in between the events of Saturday and when an official report detailing the attempted assassination will — and have — lead to "angry emails and calls."

"Hopefully the report is as timely as possible and given in a way that the public can clearly follow the timelines and how different components happened," he said.

"I think the overall operation plan that the Butler Township police developed for their role in the traffic control [was] well laid out, well planned, inner communicated with other agencies that were tasked with the event as a whole. I thought that their response to going from traffic control and or potentially patrol, into a potential active shooter kind of a response spoke to the training."

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Knights said he believes local officers' ability to identify the shooter did "minimize as best as possible the overall situation."

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"The harshness of criticism from both sides of the spectrum has been pretty brutal and relentless," he said. "It's been going on for roughly two days now. Again, I think when the entirety of the investigation is done and we have the full, complete story of how this whole event unfolded, hopefully those that are … quick to send a hate email can send back an apology just as quickly."