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Executive Protection Training in the aftermath of July 13th, 2024.
Executive Protection Training; In the immediate aftermath of the massive security failures that led to the shooting of former president Trump in Butler Pennsylvania on July 13th, ISA took the following steps.
First, we contacted sources at the Department of Homeland Security for a threat update, as many of our clients are public officials and candidates running for office. Given what had just happened we wanted to know what the threat environment looked like at the state and local level.
The guidance we received echoed previous DHS warnings of violence being directed to a growing number of local officials. The one change was an immediate increase in the violent rhetoric on social media and calls for direct action directed against officials seen as “enemies” of the former president.
That done, we published a blog post sharing the guidance from DHS, and then reminded local and state law enforcement that through our Defending Democracy Program which provides executive protection training for law enforcement, we may be able to assist them if they are next in line to support the protection of public officials during the election cycle. https://www.eptraining.us/defending-democracy-initiative/blog/
Self Reflection
In the following days after the attack, we also turned inward, because as a training provider of executive protection the events of July 13th had to be evaluated, and our instructors and curriculum managers needed to determine if our current course material required an update to ensure Butler’s failures were not going to be replicated by our graduates. ISA graduates should “know what right looks like” when they graduate. Or, at the least was there an opportunity to use this incident as a case study?
So based on the initial findings and timelines of the shooting it was easy to see there were failures in the advance work, mission planning, and poor communication between the agencies and the Secret Service.
Case Study: July 13th, 2024
How did we determine that, well the Secret Service per standard procedure reaches out to state and local departments to request officers and other resources, but it has been reported by multiple sources and in congressional testimony that planning meetings with the Secret Service and the local agencies were in one sources opinion “informal and disorganized”. In fact, it was reported that Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger was quoted as saying these meetings “left local officials to create their own operational plan”.
So local and state law enforcement had to create an operational security plan outside the Secret Service which is technically in charge of the former president’s event.
With this information in hand, we looked at our own advance work and mission planning training objectives. We found a strong focus on advance work basics, the walk-through process, site security, mission planning, and emergency procedures. But we also found we were rushing through the actual mission briefing process, which was confirmed in the August 5th -11th course we just conducted in Maryland.
Executive Protection Training: Solutions
In the future, ISA will conduct a tabletop exercise at the team level, as opposed to the requirement for each student to brief a mission plan. Often time consuming and repetitive, the previous mission brief process will become a team based exercise incorporating each member to be responsible for different aspects of the advance and mission planning process. Each will check the work of the others and and assist with writing the final operational plan.
We also noted that had a drone been in the air over the event detection and deterring the shooter may have been easier. Drones at this point are old news, but we are going to place additional time and focus on the use of drones in the advance and site security process. Talk less about them and use them more. So, when the airspace allows drone training, we will place them into operation for all exercises.
Next Steps
With this evaluation of our program of instruction complete, and a few changes made to how we will achieve our training objectives, we will now invest in a few new drones, a new tabletop exercise kit with Disaster City as a model, and change the parameters of the standard live capstone event to include a static site event.
You learn from your successes and your failures, and hopefully, our students will learn from July 13th, 2024.
For more information on ISA executive protection training, the ISA Defending Democracy program, or the security of public officials please visit our blog at
https://www.eptraining.us/blog/
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