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July 20, 2024 An assassination attempt on a presidential candidate, and increased public confidence in police
PERF members, Like all of you, I was disturbed by last Saturday’s assassination attempt on former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump. While this was clearly a security failure, there is still much we do not know about the incident, and we should allow investigations to play out before reaching any conclusions. Each day brings new information and context about what may have gone wrong. Without making any assumptions about the cause of this specific security failure, the incident made me think about the challenge of protecting politicians who may be appearing at several events a day across multiple venues while campaigning for office. The Secret Service is responsible for the protection of the president and other high-ranking officials, but the agency depends on the close cooperation and resources of state and local law enforcement agencies. Many larger agencies have plenty of resources to support the Secret Service’s operations, but many smaller agencies do not. And, as PERF has documented, many local agencies are facing staffing challenges, and, as the Washington Post reported, “local police alerted the Secret Service before former president Donald Trump’s rally Saturday that they lacked the resources to station a patrol car outside a key building where a gunman later positioned himself and shot at Trump.” We need to learn from every mistake, as the Secret Service and other agencies have done following prior security failures. We’ve rarely seen presidents in open-air vehicles after the assassination of President Kennedy. Access to buildings was made more secure after the attempted assassination of President Reagan. I’m sure we will see other changes made in the wake of this assassination attempt, and Congress will need to assess whether the Secret Service needs more resources. And I want to be sure to acknowledge the men and women who placed their bodies between the shooter and the former president within seconds. These agents work quietly behind the scenes in an often-grueling job. And when an incident like this occurs, they demonstrate courage and selflessness. For more on the incident, I recommend this New York Times compilation of on-scene video, as well as the Washington Post’s 3D analysis of the scene. Gallup polling shows increased confidence in police On another note, Gallup released polling data this week showing Americans have greater confidence in the police than they did a year ago. The poll found 51 percent of respondents have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, which is eight percentage points higher than last year. There were particularly large increases among people aged 18-34 (rising from 27 percent in 2023 to 43 percent in 2024), non-white respondents (rising from 31 percent to 44 percent), and political independents (rising from 37 percent to 49 percent). Gallup asked about confidence in 16 other institutions as well, and police rated higher than all but two. At a time when many in policing feel scrutinized and the profession is struggling to recruit the next generation of officers, it’s reassuring to know that Americans’ confidence in the police is relatively high compared to other institutions.
There’s still a lot of work to be done to build public confidence, but this polling data is welcome news. Have a great weekend! Best, Chuck |
