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Something that needs to be briefly said about some other "human factors" on the defense side of things. Not only is the Secret Service made up of real people who make mistakes, but also their job is 99% super boring, maybe even 99.99%, seeing as the last actual assassination was so long ago. Seems like a recipe for complacency. Of course, as an aside, it seems near certain we've foiled some other attempts both real and bluster, mostly in the earlier stages - I wonder if today's events change anyone's dial on the old vet killed in an FBI home raid last year who had made explicit sniper threats, owned a similar gun, and had the training to use it, though of course he wasn't going to be climbing on any roofs. No, what I mean to say is that there probably aren't all that many dedicated Secret Service agents in the first place. The threat surface as well as responsibility is enormous. You have someone following family, some following former presidents, keeping an eye on their suburban homes; for the president (and others like former President Trump) you have advance teams, mobile response, counter assault, crowd control, preparation for biological attack, equipment to maintain and transport and man, for all of that you need 24/7 presidential protection which means at least two or three shifts, plus presumably vacation time; and then on top of that you have at least the basics that man the static White House itself that needs all the same protection. It's a lot.
Faced with such a massive manpower requirement, what's normally the solution? Outsourcing. The classic. You may not notice, but at least some significant presence at these events is local or usually state police. Their numbers are welcome, but their training and skillset is very different, and these events don't happen all that often in a given state, much less an incident. I'd say these numbers are very helpful for ordinary law-keeping, and regular level incidents, but this can create problems in a Presidential-level threat environment. The Uniformed Division as a whole it seems about 1200 or more judging by some quick math per this recruiting factsheet (though even that division is subdivided and only a fraction are involved at an event like this) and only 20% of the service overall are veterans, so at least some of the UD are not veterans. Which might not matter, but at least anecdotally a veteran soldier's handling of an often-boring and then massive-adrenaline quick-decision environment is likely a bit different than a civilians, despite training. The point remains, that Secret Service numbers often need bolstering to get the kind of presence they would like.
Why do I bring this up? One theory being thrown around is that maybe someone withheld taking a shot on the shooter on purpose. This is plausible of course and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. However, there are two things that might need to be taken into consideration as higher-likelihood events. Disclaimer: of course we're still in the realm of relatively low-information speculation here, we have only seen a few chunks and slices of the story so far. One is simple - communication problems. Local/state police might not be fully looped in or on the same radio channels the same way the pros are, and I'm sure there's some institutional issues or bad feelings too. While pro FPS players who have spent years on a single Counter Strike map have named callouts for all buildings and rooftops, I'm not sure that kind of thing is SOP or even practical for this environment, assuming there even was a direct line of communication. We all know how in a corporate environment sometimes you need to speak to three people before communicating something, even professional organizations aren't immune to games of telephone. Second, the local/state police themselves. Although presumably a Secret Service agent will fire first if they see a gun, I'm not completely convinced that local/state police outsourcing would necessarily have the means and mindset to do so in the same fashion, and might even view a threat to the general public as more likely or more dangerous than a threat to the President, and that's not even saying it is a deliberate choice, just a natural disinclination. And furthermore, according to the BBC interview guy, it was precisely these regular cops who seemed confused and indecisive when they had reported the gunman - so perhaps a combination of the both of the two points above.
As a more funny aside, you know who responds almost the quickest of anyone? The media with their cameras, some of whom you can see sprinting to get a good photo or two even before we know the shooter is actually down.
My understanding is that the shooter openly carried a rifle, climbed up the side of a building in full view of security and the audience, from a range of a little over a hundred yards, posted up and fired shots without intervention on the part of Secret Service or the on-site security.
Speaking plainly, I would not have believed an attack like this was possible under any circumstances, based on all information I've received about the Secret Service and its capabilities. Maybe that's ignorance on my part. Maybe it's even a deliberate strategy on the part of the Treasury Department, deterring assassination attempts by greatly exaggerating their competence. All I know is that I cannot reconcile the reported events with my understanding of the agency's capabilities.
Sheer pedantry on my part (though what are we here for if not that?) but Secret Service has been under DHS for over 20 years now
Thanks for the pedantry, I was unaware. Looks like they still handle currency counterfeiters as well.
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