The commonly used definition of insanity is mistaken. Real insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing with no expectation of results.
American public safety agencies have steadfastly neglected the need for communications interoperability since, oh, shortly after the Detroit Police Department heated up the tubes of station KOP in 1922. Failures in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th were just another chapter in a long history of that neglect – a neglect born of pitiful arrogance across multiple dimensions.
The angle receiving most attention is that the United States Secret Service (USSS) blew it. Well, from consideration of their clearest mission, that is indisputable. The agency has a well-deserved reputation of arrogance. They may argue that the few presidential assassination attempts in modern history show their effectiveness. We may counter with an alternative and equally difficult to prove theory that there merely have been few. They’re understandably faced both with the traditional policing problem of adequately estimating crimes prevented combined with a unique mission, shall we say “service”, deserving of much secrecy.
Whether born of simple, inbred arrogance or some greater degree of hubris, the Secret Service has earned in our personal experience its reputation for not cooperating with other public safety agencies. Their demonstrated attitude is similar to that in the past of a couple large fire departments: To wit, “We don’t need to communicate with other agencies. We ARE interoperability.” That attitude has invariably, if only eventually, proven expensive to the citizenry covering costs – in taxes, property lost, and even lives sacrificed.
Six shots fired to no observable effect at an assailant within spitting distance, armed with a carbine that even the Viet Cong traded for AK-47s, scoped with the tactical expediency of hose clamps, says a lot.
Back in Butler, reports suggest that the Secret Service once again worked hard to isolate their share of the larger operation. There are many public safety and protective service missions in such an operation, not the least of which benefit hundreds or even thousands of persons at the event. Consider the demands of traffic management, outer perimeter security, and emergency medical care just to name a few. The notion that a true unified command would coalesce all those into a coherent action plan underwritten by an integrated communications plan is considered quaint.
Consequently, shit happens. Not always and rarely at levels this high, but often enough that a pattern has emerged. Thirty years ago. Ignore the principles of incident action planning and comprehensive resource management at your own peril! Or, worse yet, at the protectee and public’s collective peril.
Congressional Task Force on Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump:
Failures in Execution
Why it matters: The fragmented communications structure and lack of timely information sharing resulted in missed opportunities for the Secret Service and its state and local partners to apprehend Crooks and make informed decisions about managing the protectee prior to shots fired.
And the pattern continues with hand wringing and cackling about the sky falling if only the latest-and-greatest round of Next Generation technology cannot be had. Ignore the fact that it is always the next generation that will fix problems of communications interoperability. Or that it will simply add another floor to the Tower of Babel.
The Secret Service is emblematic of a larger, national problem exacerbated by the number agencies at all levels of government tasked with public safety. Would the problem be lessened by involvement of few agencies, if possible? Perhaps, but large agencies demonstrate the same types of insular specialization, smokestacks, and seemingly inevitable hubris. Consider that the USSS is part of the agency, the Department of Homeland Security, tasked with assuring communications interoperability across all levels of government and types of service – an agency that both struggles internally with the same between subdivisions and studiously ignores reports from its own Inspector General of inadequacies in this regard.
Put down the radio and back away from the technology! Nothing will change without serious accountability for command failures.
