(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In the wake of the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, there’s been much reporting on the rallygoers who were either injured or killed at the Butler, Pennsylvania campaign event—and for good reason.
However, relatively little attention has been paid to the four Pittsburgh cops injured at the event. Those cops are back on duty after experiencing minor injuries when they were hit by shrapnel, but questions remain about whether those officers’ were supposed to be at the July 13 Trump rally in the first place.
According to a July 16 report from WPXI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State Police requested Pittsburgh motorcycle officers to assist with former President Trump’s motorcade from the airport in Allegheny County to Butler County, and back again. Pittsburgh sent 10 officers.
However, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police reportedly said that those motorcycle officers weren’t actually approved to help with the Trump rally. Instead, they should have been available to help with First Lady Jill Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh at the same time, according to WPXI.
“Sources said cycle units from nearby universities had to be called in to assist Pittsburgh Police with Jill Biden’s motorcade,” WPXI reported on July 16.
At the Trump shooting, four of the Pittsburgh cops were hit with shrapnel. They were treated at the scene, and two were briefly hospitalized with minor injuries.
Two days later, two of the injured Pittsburgh cops were transferred to other units. The President of the Pittsburgh police officers’ union blasted the move at the time.
“In a time when we should be honoring the heroics of these officers, we’ve created some petty administrative investigation in the midst of a serious political race,” Fraternal Order of Police President Bob Swartzwelder said last month.
Since then, there have been no public updates about the matter. Headline USA reached out to the parties involved, but they were tight-lipped—with Pittsburgh police denying that the transfer of the two officers had anything to do with their presence at the Trump rally.
“We are grateful our Pittsburgh Police officers were in position to assist in helping extricate injured victims from the crowd and get them to safety, along with our regional law enforcement partners. The two transfers—not four—were part of an administrative decision by the Chief to reallocate personnel. They were unrelated to the officers’ deployment to the rally,” Pittsburgh police spokesperson Cara Cruz said in an email to Headline USA.
Swartzwelder, for his part, initially agreed to talk to this reporter and provided his phone number. However, he never answered his calls and stopped responding to messages.
Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board director Beth Pittinger did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. Pittinger said last month that “there’s a dispute whether they had authorization to be there [at the Trump rally], of they decided on their own they were going to go.”
Headline USA has filed a Pennsylvania Right to Know Law request for records that may shed light on the matter—including whether the officers were assigned to the Trump rally or went there on their own accord. This publication will keep readers posted on its effort to obtain records.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
