Throughout suburban America each day teams of roofers are replacing old shingles with new on house roofs. Carrying tools and building materials, they move and work with sure footedness approaching that of mountain goats, and typically without the use of safety ropes to prevent falls.
These workers came to mind when I read the excuse Kimberly A. Cheatle, the director of the United States Secret Service, gave in an ABC News interview for why no Secret Service agents or other police were stationed on the roof Saturday from which an individual with a rifle attempted to assassinate Donald Trump while Trump presented a scheduled presidential campaign speech outdoors to a large group of supporters. Here is how she explained why this one roof among a small number of reasonably close places an assassin likely would see as optimal for taking a fatal shot was left unguarded:
That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.
However, we are not talking about anything like the steep roofs you see on many churches. Rather, the roof from which the shots were fired was far less steep than the roof of the typical suburban house in America. It was the kind of roof that roofers see as easy and that residents will not think twice about standing on to cut branches off trees.
This excuse from Cheatle sounds like the “officer safety” excuse often deployed in an effort to justify putting in jeopardy the lives and health of individuals, and their pets, when police take extremely aggressive actions, including no-knock SWAT team raids of homes. In those cases, as in this one, it seems police leaders are reinterpreting the phrase “to serve and protect” to mean serving and protecting police from any risk of harm instead of the phrase’s apparent call that police should act bravely, risking harm to police to ensure the safety of others, including in this case a presidential candidate.
Cheatle’s excuse sounds like bunk. Who doesn’t expect the typical Secret Service agent can run around on a roof like William Shatner did playing a cop in episodes of T.J. Hooker back in the 1980s? We are not talking about advanced parkour here, though you’d think there would be some Secret Service agents who would have that skill too.
If the Secret Service really does not have enough agents who can handle being stationed on roofs, it should put out a wanted ad seeking people with roofing or other preparatory experience. Enough with the dumb excuse.