Mar a Lago Breach Highlights Powerful Collaboration Between Law Enforcement and Secret Service

FBI Director Kash Patel says the FBI is dedicating all necessary resources to the incident and that his agency will work closely with the Secret Service and state and federal partners. Joining us now to discuss the shooting of the armed man who breached the president's private residence Sunday is Jeffrey Halstead, former police chief and spokesman for Genesis. Good to have you with us. Jeffrey, it looks like another possible assassination attempt. What's your initial response? Well, good morning and thank you for having me. You're going to find out a lot more about, you know, the shooter or attempted shooter here when you go back at the technology vices, look at the social media accounts. And then I know the family reported the young man missing. Seems like he drove all the way down, you know, to Palm Beach to actually carry out an attempted incident. But a lot of people need to understand the power of the collaboration efforts between local law enforcement, federal law enforcement and Secret Service. This is an extremely safe compound. But on social media, there are so many different narratives that enrage and sometimes outrage people. And when they have a little bit of undiagnosed mental illness, sadly, it can be very, very tragic. You're already seeing calls for neighbors in the area to check their doorbell cam footage. What other potential methods of investigation do you expect here? Well, I think once the FBI starts going into more of a deep psychological and personal profile of the attempted shooter, then they're going to find a lot more information. When they left their home, the route they took, they're actually going to find the location if the shotgun was purchased at a retail and or a gun store, or if he took that or borrowed it or bought it from somewhere else. There's going to be a lot more information here. Now, keeping in mind that this attempt, you know, was related to the second attempted assassination of the president while he was playing golf there with that suspect, you know, hiding in the bushes with his AR-15. And just a continued note of how secure and the level of law enforcement, I worked multiple, well over 40 dignitary heads of state and president visits throughout my career. It is an extremely impressive level of security, counter security and counter surveillance. So it's not going to be the kind of place you could just simply walk in and try to cause harm. Do you have any sense of what could be a range of the possibilities here as to how he got in? It sounded as though there was an exiting vehicle and then he attempted to go in, you know, like an entrance through an egress point. Sometimes that's very common when you have an initial attempt to either surprise security and or get in without what is most commonly an entrance point. However, as they found out here within seconds, there was a confrontation identification and then sadly a use of force decision. Use of force decision always followed with the attempted leveling of the shotgun towards law enforcement. And that forced, you know, they have to take immediate reaction. And how do you see that playing out? Will there be much controversy around what happened as it took place with the law enforcement there? When you have breaches, attempted breaches or attempted entrances like this, the Secret Service is, I'm telling you, they are masterful at doing an assessment and after action and a security review, it is going to change dramatically for these points of entry, both for vehicles and pedestrians. And there'll be more of an initial screening or staging pulled back from the main entry points so that a smaller team or a law enforcement group can clear certain things before they get to an official entry and or exit point, both for vehicles and for pedestrians. So if you're a resident in that area, plan on those restrictions, delays and other areas where traffic is going to be restricted heavily, probably for at least a few weeks, if not many, many months. And how do you see this, if at all, changing the narrative? There's been so much concern about political violence already so far this year. But another incident, do you see this potentially adjusting people's views on the topic? You know, I wish our elected officials and I'm talking, you know, some of the most powerful, you know, elected officials in the federal government, I wish the rhetoric would get back to more an assessment of a teamwork and a communication and a strengthening of relationships and partnerships. Yes, you can agree to disagree on a multitude of issues. The name calling, the demonizing of law enforcement, we saw this back in 2020, you know, the George Floyd protest all over in parts of the world. And then law enforcement was actually demonized for years. And it is extremely challenging profession. It's very, very dangerous. That kind of rhetoric of literally demonizing law enforcement and our elected officials on both sides, it just needs to stop. And then we need to get back to working collectively as a nation and moving some agenda items forward. And what can concerned folks at home do to help turn down the rhetoric? Yeah, I have a conversation tonight with this, you know, with, you know, my sons, their friends, different generations, the generations that literally stay on social media hours on end, there's so much disinformation, misinformation and blatant lies on a multitude of stories, not just one party and not just the other, a multitude of stories. We need to start pulling ourselves back from so much social media engagement, you'll find out your stress level goes down a little more optimism, and you're not baiting into some of these wild stories out there that infuriate and motivate persons to do something like this. It's just something we got to stop in our society. And for folks who are watching around the world, America, of course, is a leader in so many ways. But there's been so much tragedy in terms of the loss of life and the threat to life in political violence forms. What do you have to say to folks who really see America as having an inordinate amount of political violence? Well, they are right, because it is a lot worse than I have seen probably in, you know, 50 years when I started understanding national politics when I was in high school and college. And then where we are today, it's just extremely the rhetoric is damaging. And then it instills a lot of anger, outrage and violence. And then when you look, remember, just 20 years ago, protests were fairly manageable because I commanded the unit in Phoenix for over 12 years at three different ranks. Today's protests are much, much different, both on the law enforcement aggression side and the protest response side. What happens is more communication needs to occur between law enforcement, protest group and activists, as well as those that absolutely cannot stand the law enforcement presence. We need to build and strengthen those partnerships. We have communications platform in Genesis that actually motivates them to work together so they can have peaceful protests and start moving some of these conversations forward to the serious decision makers. Well, Jeffrey Halstead, it's excellent to hear your perspective and with all your years of insight coming in today. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.