US Secret Service and the reform problem after Trump was shot

The US Secret Service has been advised to cut back on a little-known part of its work following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

After Mr. Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas commissioned a committee to investigate the incident and the activities of the US Secret Service. In a new report released last week by the committee of four former law enforcement and homeland security officials, the US Secret Service was hampered by having to simultaneously carry out the dual mission of protecting VIPs and investigating criminal activities, according to Politico . The report recommends that the Secret Service consider reducing its investigative role to focus resources on protection. "All assets should be allocated to that mission before other missions, including law enforcement duties related to financial fraud, are performed," the report said.

Mật vụ Mỹ và bài toán cải tổ sau vụ ông Trump bị bắn — US Secret Service agents protect Mr. Trump at Butler on July 13.

US Secret Service against counterfeit money

The elimination of the investigative side would mark a major change for the Secret Service, since crime fighting was actually the agency’s first function when it was created, before protecting the president. The Secret Service, a group of tall men in dark suits, with poker faces and earpieces, is primarily known for protecting the president, but that’s not why it was created. On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill creating the Secret Service, just one day before he was assassinated, with the mission of combating counterfeiting. At the time, the agency was under the control of the U.S. Treasury Department . By the end of the Civil War, nearly a third of all money in circulation was counterfeit.

It wasn’t until after President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 that the Secret Service took on the additional role of protecting the president. For more than a century, the Secret Service maintained both roles. In 2003, the agency was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security, which had been created the year before. While the Secret Service is best known for protecting the president, its crime-fighting activities are far more extensive. The agency investigates counterfeiting, financial crimes, cybercrime, and assists in investigating missing children and child exploitation. The Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center is responsible for preventing a wide range of crimes, including school shootings. According to the commission investigating the Trump assassination, these activities may have diverted resources from the protection mission. The report recommended that the Secret Service focus resources on protection, and regularly train local partners. “This effort will take time and may require the elimination of some peripheral responsibilities such as investigating financial fraud, counterfeiting and perhaps all criminal investigations not directly related to the protection mission,” the report said.

Controversial proposal

The commission's proposal quickly drew pushback from Secret Service supporters. Acting Director Ronald Rowe said the agency was working to ensure it could carry out its dual mission of protection and complex investigations. Others argued that the two missions complemented each other rather than conflicted. Crimefighting helped strengthen agents' relationships with state and local police, honing the skills needed to protect the president. Despite their reputation for looking cool and staying close to the president, Secret Service agents saw themselves differently. "They're not bodyguards. They get very upset if you call them bodyguards. Protection is not bodyguards. Protection is making sure things don't happen, and that requires police work," said Jeffrey Robinson, a biographer of former Secret Service agent Joseph Petro.

Critics of the committee's proposal say narrowing the Secret Service's responsibilities could worsen recruitment and retention problems. They say the security lapses that allowed the gunman to injure Trump in Butler have nothing to do with the Secret Service's crime-fighting work. "It's like proposing to do plastic surgery on someone with a broken bone. It has nothing to do with it," a former senior Secret Service official told Politico . Former Secret Service official Gordon Heddell said that narrowing the agency's role would change the quality of recruits because it would require a different kind of role model. "And it wouldn't be a better person, it wouldn't be a well-rounded person," said Heddell, the former inspector general of the Department of Defense . Mayorkas has not yet decided on the committee's recommendations, saying only that he would consider them. A White House spokesperson said the administration would carefully evaluate the findings and recommendations in the report.

Thanhnien.vn

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/mat-vu-my-va-bai-toan-cai-to-sau-vu-ong-trump-bi-ban-185241021165031448.htm