Secret Service Recruit Kills Brother on New Year’s Eve

The agency has recently touted improvements in its recruiting efforts after offering $40,000-$60,000 of dollars in recruiting bonuses, but has not responded to repeated RealClearPolitics inquiries about its retention rates. Earlier this week, Secret Service Director Sean Curran met with United Marine Corps Sergeant Major Carlos Ruiz to collaborate on ways Marines could continue service to their country after leaving the military.

This week, the Secret Service announced plans to hire 4,000 employees over the next two years and cut its hiring timelines in half. But long-time observers warned that speeding up the hiring process would undoubtedly result in less training and the hiring of less qualified individuals.

Until the investigation into the killing concludes, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office is not releasing the suspect’s name. RealClearPolitics is withholding the suspects’ and victims’ names until the Broward County State Attorney’s Office determines whether to file criminal charges.

Florida has a robust “stand-your-ground” law, which allows individuals to use reasonable, even deadly, force to defend themselves from imminent threats or death or serious harm without a legal duty to retreat.

Shortly after 10 p.m. on Dec. 31, Broward County Regional Communications received a report of a shooting in the Tamarac, Florida area.

When police and fire rescue arrived, they located a 16-year-old male, who had been shot. The juvenile was airlifted to Broward Health Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead. An adult woman suffered a graze wound and was treated at the scene, the sheriff’s office said. The shooter remained on the scene, was detained for questioning, “presented a self-defense claim,” and was later released.

The Secret Service hired the suspect in late fall, and he was scheduled to begin agent training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in early to mid-January.

“The United States Secret Service is aware of an open investigation by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office that involves a recently hired special agent trainee, who was awaiting entry into an upcoming training academy,” the agency said in a statement to RCP. “This is an extremely tragic situation, and we are fully cooperating with the Broward Sheriff’s Office as they lead this investigation.

“Once completed, the results of the independent review will be presented to the Florida State Attorney’s Office,” the agency continued. “… Any additional questions related to the investigation itself should be directed to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The employee under investigation has been placed on administrative leave as the process moves forward.” 

Former agents and other sources in the Secret Service community have recently criticized the agency for lowering standards in recruiting, arguing that misplaced DEI initiatives were given priority during the Obama and Biden administrations, and former law enforcement experience was not valued as much as in previous years, when the agency had a better reputation and protection record.

Some have also argued that Curran isn’t doing enough to rid the agency of DEI hires and woke culture, which one agent has publicly blamed for the near-killing of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Other agents have raised concerns over the Secret Service’s decades-long policy of not requiring psychological exams as part of the hiring process – unlike most police departments across the country. Doing so would prevent any type of insider threats to the president or other protectees, these sources argue.

Many of these complaints have circulated for more than a decade. Former GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who served as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, held numerous hard-hitting hearings on the failures of the Secret Service after the 2012 Colombia prostitution scandal involving several agents who were caught with prostitutes during the Obama administration. Chaffetz was also highly critical of several White House fence-jumping incidents – so much so that the fence surrounding the complex was raised.

In 2015, Chaffetz and committee staff also produced a detailed, bipartisan report on “The Secret Service in Crisis,” which recommended numerous reforms, many of which the agency has yet to implement. 

Three months before the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, RCP reported on a female agent’s mental health meltdown and physical attack on her supervisor, which took place at Joint Base Andrews, before a planned trip protecting then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Last year, the agency spent $2 million on a Super Bowl recruitment video by Hollywood producer Michael Bay in which Curran is prominently featured. The expenditure came after hundreds of agents applied for lateral transfer to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The agents are working harder than ever at what many argue is an unsustainable pace after the previous acting director, Ron Rowe, promised “a paradigm shift” post-Butler – that they would not have to continue “doing more with less,” a common refrain in the Secret Service over the last decade.

The vice-presidential detail is especially taxed because JD Vance travels much more than his predecessor, Kamala Harris, but the agency has kept the number of agents assigned to it at similar levels. One source tells RCP that vice presidential agents work five to six days a week, while Trump’s detail works two to three days.