Theory — Secret Service understaffed because they won’t “lower” standards and hire specialist snipers?

[Multicolored Lemur]

After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, there are probably plenty of Americans with military sniper experience. They just might lack ?? five years of civilian law experience or whatever else the standard is.

Regarding the assassination attempt on former President Trump, which took the life of volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, and seriously injured two other persons—

The Secret Service failed, quite literally, to take the high ground!

They should have been on top of the water tower, and probably on top of the very building the shooter got on. The sniper probably would have had a spotter with him or her, and hopefully they would have heard the guy climbing up.

Anyway, my theory is … years of understaffing because they don’t want to “lower” standards. It’s the tyranny of the belief in the “well-rounded” employee. They’re not able to hire specialists due to the way they have set things up.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

This is the Gardner theory of multiple intelligence.

And in so many areas, we limit ourselves. Because we insist to ourselves that we have to hire somebody good at a bunch of different things.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Why the Secret Service keeps failing

If events like the assassination attempt of Donald Trump are to be avoided in the future, the agency needs to change.

www.vox.com

“ . . as was the case in 2014, when an intruder with a knife jumped the White House fence and walked in through the front door. . “

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This is when former President Obama was in office. That part is a little bit good luck in that it clearly shows the failings are bipartisan. I mean, to find the silver lining and all.

All the same, the agency needs to learn from its failings.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burned out by overtime

Americans say they are being required to work an exorbitant amount of overtime to compensate for staffing shortages that have plagued the economy.

www.nbcnews.com

November 2023 —

“What we have seen is an aggressive normalization of understaffing,” said Michelle Mahon, assistant director of nursing practice for the union National Nurses United. “The hospital industry has been capitalizing on this narrative that there’s a nursing shortage, when in fact there is not. There are a million nurses who are licensed to practice in this country who are not working in nursing largely because of understaffing and poor working conditions.”

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I think this is true for a lot of fields. It’s a shame it’s true for nursing.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

The Secret Service failed, quite literally, to take the high ground!

They should have been on top of the water tower, and probably on top of the very building the shooter got on. The sniper probably would have had a spotter with him or her, and hopefully they would have heard the guy climbing up.

The Secret Services failed on many things the day of the attempted assassination and I'm sure they have had many other incidents that have not been publicized. One of the bigger failures, if not biggest, was that rally goers spotted the shooter on top of the roof minutes before the shooting occurred. They reported it, and while the police seemed to try to intervene, but none of them bothered to stop the rally and immediately get Trump off of the stage.

“ . . as was the case in 2014, when an intruder with a knife jumped the White House fence and walked in through the front door. . “

Ditto.

Anyway, my theory is … years of understaffing because they don’t want to “lower” standards. It’s the tyranny of the belief in the “well-rounded” employee. They’re not able to hire specialists due to the way they have set things up.

There's definitely some understaffing, but as you bring up, we should also look at the reasons behind that. I agree with you that it may not always be because there's not enough people available to do the job. Of course, budget cuts or tightening might play a role. I could imagine that hiring a specialist might make the job more efficient just as the saying goes, work smarter, not harder. You can have 1,000 guys out there, if they not well positioned, have poor strategy, then even that high number of staff may not always be effective.

Check out this reporting NBC News:

The arm of the Secret Service that protects presidents, vice presidents and their families is nearly 10% smaller than it was a decade ago despite warnings from Congress and a government watchdog that it needed to add agents or risk compromising its mission.

That shortfall resulted in the denial of requests for additional personnel from agents guarding former President Donald Trump over the last two years, but no resource requests were denied for the rally where Trump was shot, a Secret Service official told NBC News.

Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson, acknowledged in a statement that some requests were denied. "In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protectee," he said. "This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee."

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

They reported it, and while the police seemed to try to intervene, but none of them bothered to stop the rally and immediately get Trump off of the stage.

I’m going to embrace this as the main tension point. Because none of the officers were ready to take the big, abrupt action.

only when you’re really prepared

For example, a doctor treats early and aggressively with a powerful antibiotic because he or she’s been to this rodeo before.

Instead of safer first steps, which is usually he better way to do things.

For example, if you’re a sniper, you’re got to be prepared to shot and kill a fellow human being on spec.

Wait a minute. If they’re pointing a gun at the President, that’s not spec. That’s definitive.

Well, they could be fellow law enforcement with another agency. In which case, their photo will run for weeks and weeks, and you’ve just made their spouse a widow, and their children orphans.

You’ve got to have enough face in your team and the map of where other snipers are, that you can take that shot.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

The problem may start at the top, as well. I'm not the Secret Service director lacked experience or the right type of experience or if he or she was just a yes man. Directors or those at the top should be bold enough to offer ideas, even if it seems to go against the direction that their superiors are pushing them to. The same goes for nursing and other healthcare jobs.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Directors or those at the top should be bold enough to offer ideas,

System accident - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is the best I have.

For example, in the “Three Mile Island” near-accident, it was the safety system itself. A light said a valve was open or closed. But it actually showed the signal that had been sent to the valve, not the end result of the valve. And there were other things. For in these kinds of cases, there are often multiple small factors which cross in a “perfect storm” kind of way.

I like the analogy of clay in your hand. It’s easy to hold it. But if you squeeze too hard, the clay comes out between your fingers.

Meaning, perfectionism is a trap. If you try to get “perfect,” you won’t even get good.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

There have been several conspiracy theories offered as an alternative explanation. One conspiracy is that someone wanted Trump to be taken out so it was an inside job.

Another conspiracy is that the whole thing was fake. It was orchestrated by Trump as an attempt to boost his ratings and perhaps support the narrative that a deep state is after him.

Personally, I don't subscribe to any of them, but it's just sad that some people would actually believe these things UNLESS they have good evidence for it. But once we have real bullets flying around, with people getting hurt and killed, then that sort of puts a hole on the conspiracy theories.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

but it's just sad that some people would actually believe these things

I’m remember being in a sports bar pre-Covid and a guy told me mermaids were real. I later found out there was an “Animal Planet” mockumentary.

Anyway, a guy had two images. One, a webbed hand by a portal. Two, the fact that the authorities, meaning “they,” closed off a beach and covered something with sheets of plastic.

The kicker was that this guy was seemingly a successful sales person and his son was a student at the University of Texas.

And later on . . .

When I was buying a new car in 2022, I ran into some crappy sales people who made some really unforced errors.

So, I decided maybe he wasn’t that good a sales person.