The Secret Service and the Cop Mentality

[Savannahmann]

I've been considering this for days. I previously wrote about the systemic problems with the reliance on electronic alarms here, and here.

Now, I'd like to take it a step beyond. The problem with police use of force is that it is always justified under the cloud of the officer was in fear of his life. In other words, so long as the cop mouths those words, he can get away with murder. Why? Because of a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that the cop should be able to protect himself. So the cops are taught from day one that the first duty is to go home alive at the end of the shift.

The Secret Service are cops. They are trained as cops first. Before the DHS nonsense, they were treasury officers who chased counterfeit money people, and investigated crimes against our currency. But they were cops, who were taught the first duty is to go home alive and everything that helped that justified the result. A jesuitical argument, but one that is common to the cop mentality.

Then they get assigned to protective details. This is the cream assignment. This is the reason they joined the Secret Service in the first place. But the training is different. They are taught that the new first duty is to make sure the Protectee goes home at the end of the shift, alive. But that training is in direct conflict with the first instinctive response, the trained instinctive response, protect yourself.

Look at the reactions of the people in that clip. The man in the grey suit at 9 seconds in. The agent in front there. He is trying to do two things at once. He's trying to duck, the instinctive response that humans have when danger approaches. He's also trying to spread out and protect the President behind him. To put his body between the danger and the President.

That's what I'm talking about. The instincts that kick in during those first fractions of a second. The instinctive action that moves you towards your actual goal. For cops, the actual goal is to go home alive. For bodyguards, it has to be that the protectee is more important than going home alive. Their life must be your first goal.

Sloppy work by the Secret Service lets the President get in an elevator with an unknown man carrying a gun. In books and TV, perhaps I should say Lore and Legend, the Secret Service would spot the tells that indicate the man in armed. Worse, everyone around knew he was armed, and nobody asked that question. "Does anyone carry a gun to work?" When the supervisor of the man was called, the first thing he did was ask the man for the gun. Hello? Seriously?

We want the man in the grey suit protecting the President. We know he ducked because it is instinctive, but he also spread out to try and block the bullets heading towards the protectee. We hope we have the detail that protected Reagan, watch the video again. In seconds they had the John Hinckley in custody. In the time it took the lunatic to run across the lawn at the White House the detail around Reagan had the President in the car, the suspect in custody, and were driving away with the Protectee towards safety.

Perhaps it's time to change who we hire to be the bodyguards for the President. Perhaps we should start changing a lot of things, like the simple truth. There are things worth dying for. We must start to explain to the guards that there is no higher calling than protecting the President. We need to find the people who think like the man in the grey suit. They are the ones who have the right mentality, the right frame of mind.

[TM99]

1. The problems right now came from the top.

Pierson wanted the SS to be 'more friendly and inviting' like Disneyland.

In that video are men, who despite their instincts for self-preservation, are acting swiftly and decisively to secure the scene and save lives.

They are not friendly. They are not inviting. The problem is likely not going to be the men and women in the detail. It is, as we are learning, a management problem.