The obvious win is that the would-be attacker was apprehended with zero fatalities on the scene. Beyond that, the win/loss record gets murkier.
As far as that innermost layer of security goes, they sprang into action and got their protectees out of harm’s way lickety-split. But the dias is not where the trouble was, is it?
He got in. THAT was the trouble.
Problem-solving will need to focus on the outer rings of security. We’re talking about a big event, some 2500 people in the dinner, plus kitchen and serving staff. Complicating the issue is the fact that folks that had no connection whatever to the dinner were using the hotel as well.
Both the would-be shooter (is alleged still the right word to use in this case?) and attendees noticed that security at a dinner chock-a-block full of ‘statutory successors’ of the POTUS. There is a worst-case scenario where Grassley would have been sworn in as President had things gone very wrong at the event.
What do we know? We know that the shooter had booked a room in the hotel, carried his bag of weapons down an unguarded staircase, holed up in an unoccupied room nearby, and tried to Leroy Jenkins his way past the guards and into the room where everyone was gathered.
The first and obvious question is — were any corners cut on staffing levels as a result of the latest Schumer Shutdown freezing Secret Service resources? Secret Service hasn’t been funded since Valentines’ Day, and Dems are STILL not budging on this issue.
Bongino, who’s done this for a living, gave a couple of observations and insights — events local to DC often have more junior and inexperienced agents running the show, with the more experienced agents looking after trips outside of the DC area or abroad. We might need to change that policy.
He also mentioned the difficulty of right-sizing the ‘clean’ area where parts of the building have been screened, because for that screening to matter at all, those areas need to ‘STAY screened’, so to speak. If someone breezes through the magnetometer, only to get a knife from the kitchen staff (or really, any other kind of hazard), the screening has created a false sense of safety. If you put the outer ring too far away, that sets up other problems, like creating a bottleneck that gives the crazies a different sort of target of opportunity. In this case, journos and dignitaries milling about outside while the ticket gets checked.
Solutions he mentioned would include augmenting staffing levels, either with more Secret Service, or with hired security to patrol/block some of the weak links like the stairwell doors the attacker exploited. Indoor drones would allow for monitoring threats and identify anyone who might be acting suspicious or appear to be ‘casing’ the venue. He also recommended what stood out as the most obvious way to keep a ‘runner’ from blowing through a checkpoint — some sort of solid barrier that requires direction changes to pass through it.
Source: Clash Daily
