The Secret Service knew it would face an avalanche in 2024. There would be presidential campaigns, political conventions, and a NATO summit. It was looking to be one of the busiest years in the agency’s recent history, even as threats of violence against political leaders were rising. The service was not ready. “Now more than ever, it is critical that we retain employees,” then-director Kimberly Cheatle wrote in an agency-wide email in July 2023. Instead of growing, the service shrank. At least 1,400 of its 7,800 employees left in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the largest outflow from the agency in at least two decades. This summer, two assassination attempts against former President Trump revealed deep problems in the agency. Its agents say one problem underlies all the others: an exodus of the best-trained people, the New York Times reports.
Their departures, partly rooted in longstanding failures by Secret Service management, have left agents in a kind of permanent state of emergency, lacking the focus, rest and training necessary to do their jobs well, said more than two dozen current and former employees. Reasons for their departure include excessive overtime, often assigned unexpectedly and sometimes unpaid. An effort to rehire retired Secret Service agents inadvertently encouraged more to retire to receive both a salary and a pension. Perceived favoritism in promotions and hiring was evident, such as when the agency's chief uniformed officer worked part-time as a real estate agent for subordinates who subsequently received promotions. Additionally, agents' requests to adopt new technologies like drones, which could enhance protection and reduce workload, were ignored. The agency's challenges were exacerbated by the departure of experienced agents and inadequacies in recruitment and training processes. Ronald Rowe, the service’s acting director, said the agency needed to rapidly expand the number of trained agents, including sharpshooters and other gun carriers, and acquire more advanced technology to confront growing threats from domestic and foreign actors.
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