The police department that serves the township where former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt over the weekend has not had a chief for at least a month.

News of the leadership vacuum comes as experts and officials call for investigations into the communications failures between local, state, and federal agents that allowed a shooter to hit Trump, kill one rally attendee and injure at least two others.

Former Butler Township Police Department Chief John Hays retired last month, both Hays and a department administrator told The Intercept. There is no acting chief, but Lieutenant Matthew Pearson is the current head of the department. The department, which employs around 20 people, did not immediately respond to a request for further information about the absence of a chief.

Amid reports that Secret Service agents manning the event were asleep, negligent, or both, the lack of communication between various local, state, and federal agencies likely placed disproportionate responsibility on local police, said Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia University Law School who studies policing.

“Local cops were left to shoulder the burden of security without much help from any federal agency, whether Secret Service or the FBI or anyone else,” he said. “They should have yelled for help, and so should the county government leaders.”

The shooting has raised new questions in the debate over police funding, gun control, and how well officers can be expected to handle active shooters, regardless of resources and training.

Similar questions plagued officials in the wake of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, after........

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