December 16, 2014
Top News Today
A lawsuit has been filed by a group of African-American Secret Service agents who allege the agency’s culture is rampant with racism. Their fears are that racism is being put ahead of duty among some agents, which is leaving the President of the United States and his family in jeopardy.
Black Secret Service agents have listed strange lapses in security, including the man who jumped the fence at the White House and made it through unlocked doors and inside to the East Room without being apprehended by any Secret Service agent, as proof that some of what appears to be a “mistake” is actually just racial indifference toward a black president. A recently released Department of Homeland Security report about that incident determined that a number of “performance, organizational, technical and other” factors contributed to that unprecedented security breach.
“If the black Secret Service agents’ legal claims related to racism in the agency are true, then there is a threat to the president’s security because he is a black man,” says Matthew Fogg, a retired chief deputy U.S. Marshal who in 1998 won a multimillion-dollar jury verdict in a racial discrimination lawsuit filed against his agency. “If they are treating black people differently, then how can that not affect the president?”
The track record of the U.S. Secret Service in protecting President Obama has come under intense scrutiny in recent months due to several major security lapses, including one in October that ended with the resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson. According to Fogg, the fact that the most qualified agents are not getting promoted within an agency due to racial factors, indicates that race is an issue in the quality of protection being provided to individuals, including the nation’s first black president.
All presidents receive a normal amount of threats, which are swiftly dealt with by government agencies designed to protect them. However, Mr. Obama and his family have received the most threats in history, largely due to them being African-American. There are plenty of racists who would love to put a premature end to the Obama presidency and it is the job of the Secret Service to protect the President of the United States at all costs. Do you believe racism within the department might be leaving the president and his family vulnerable?
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