Bingo! Sometimes I Hate Being Right

Sometimes I hate being right, but…I was right on this one.

On July 21st I had this blog post, My Own Conjecture on the Secret Service and the Assassination Attempt

In that blog post I had this paragraph, “The other thing—I am only guessing at, is how “incident command” is executed by the Secret Service. Do they even have such a thing? There should be “one single command post” with multiple stations for all law enforcement agencies to have a senior representative to help paint the security situation and respond to incidents—should they occur. Thus, you have a common operating picture in a single location. There are not multiple command posts with each agency in their own vehicle, [bold is my emphasis] etc. While the above is to be expected in a unified command situation…there is nothing to say it did happen that way.”

Then there was this Washington Post Article that I’m quoting a paragraph from, “The U.S. Secret Service failed to see warnings from local police about the gunman at a Donald Trump campaign rally last month in part because they were stationed in separate command centers [Duh!], which hurt communication, the agency’s acting director said Friday. Ronald Rowe Jr. said the agency takes full responsibility for the security failure at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, and he pledged to make changes that could require new investments in personnel and equipment.”

Bingo!  And, they had radio issues and connectivity issues between agencies. Being in a single command post is one way to mitigate those.