24 hours after an attempted assassination on Trump, Safety and Security expert weighs in

Safety and security are on the minds of millions of Americans after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

With so many questions left unanswered, WINK News Reporter Olivia Jean went to our WINK News Security Specialist, Kristen Ziman, hoping to get some answers.

Ziman cannot say for sure yet if this was a failure of the Secret Service. There’s not enough information; instead, she labeled it a “breach of security.”

Many are asking how something like this could happen. We all thought events with presidential appearances had extensive security. Ziman has an answer.

Presidential assassinations have happened before, but never from 400 feet away.

“This incident has low predictability but a high impact. So, in setting up the perimeter and the security for the Secret Service, in collaboration with local law enforcement, they may not have looked at that building as a viable threat because it’s never happened before.

Ziman, a former police chief herself, said that’s why the roof may have been overlooked.

“Most definitely, there was a breach of security. What we have to determine is what failure where was the gap that we missed,” Ziman said.

She says we need to ask several questions.

1. Why was the building in direct line of the former president’s site not manned? One potential reason could be that it was 400 feet away, and they were not anticipating a threat from that distance because it had never occurred before.
2. Were there gaps in the threat assessment or operations plan leading up to the rally that could’ve prevented the shooting?
3. Was that building determined to be an area for a potential threat and if so, were there enough resources to allocate to the area prior to the rally?

“I think that there will be a lot of people who step up and say, here is where we could have done better, or we did everything we could it will be very interesting to see how it unfolds,” Ziman said.

The FBI and the Secret Service are investigating.

“Anyone in law enforcement who says they don’t like to look at failures really shouldn’t be in law enforcement. We learn from our mistakes. In this case, it may be a gap that we didn’t see before,” Ziman said.

After all this, Americans ask if the Secret Service is trustworthy.

“This is devastating for them because it happened on their watch. But to say that they are a failure because of the entire entity, I would caution to that because again, they’re made up of human beings, who are training in sacrificing by throwing themselves in front of bullets,” Ziman said.

Another question Americans are asking is as Trump and Biden continue campaigning, will these types of events be safe? Ziman said “There’s never going to be a time where we’re 100% safe from someone who is so focused on harming others. For a law enforcement official to say, ‘don’t worry, we’ve got this under control and nothing is going to happen’ would be disingenuous and irresponsible.

More than 24 hours later, many questions remain unanswered, but Ziman says this is standard procedure. There is one thing for sure…

“This is a perpetrator who attempted an assassination on the former president of the United States; regardless of what side of the aisle you’re on and who you support, I would hope that we could collectively agree that that is egregious,” Ziman said.

Ziman said she believes the FBI will lead the investigation, even as it investigates the Secret Service. In her experience, the FBI is highly trained, highly professional, and highly competent, especially in high-profile cases.