The United States Secret Service has acknowledged a series of security failures it made during a July campaign rally where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot at and wounded in the ear.
In a review of the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service identified “deficiencies” in advanced security planning and poor coordination with local police, said the agency’s acting director, Ronald Rowe.
“While some members of the advance team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols,” Rowe told a news briefing on Friday.
Questions over the competency of the elite US law enforcement agency have swirled since a gunman perched on a rooftop opened fire at Trump during the rally, grazing the former president in the ear and hitting three people in the crowd, one fatally.
Congressional officials lambasted the agency for failing to clear the area or respond quickly to the attacker, who local officers were alerted to up to 20 minutes before the shooting.
The backlash pushed the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to resign. Several other agents were placed on leave.
“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service. It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13th and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” Rowe said.
The agency’s major failures, set out in a five-page report on Friday, were poor communication with local law enforcement, an “over-reliance” on mobile devices, and not resolving “line-of-sight issues”, said Rowe.
While the building the attacker climbed on to, some 150 yards (137m) from Trump, had been pinpointed as a potential hazard, officials failed to take the right steps to address it, Rowe said. Instead of placing snipers on the roof, only a tactical team from local law enforcement was stationed on the second floor.
Law enforcement also relied too heavily on mobile phones, instead of the Secret Service’s radio system, to send vital information, delaying communications.
The breakdown was especially problematic for Trump’s protective detail, “who were not apprised of how focused state and local law enforcement were in the minutes leading up to the attack on locating the suspicious subject”.
The Congressional task force investigating the attempted assassination of Trump issued a statement on Friday encouraging Rowe to “follow through” on holding employees accountable and to cooperate with its independent investigation.
“Complacency has no place in the Secret Service,” it said. (AlJazeera)