Secret Service Opens Fire

Something's missing from the media coverage of the incident Sunday night when Secret Service agents protecting Naomi Biden "opened fire" on three people trying to break into an unoccupied fedmobile they were using to ferry her around Georgetown. The UK Daily Mail's account seems to be the mopst complete:

Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden's granddaughter Naomi opened fire after three suspects tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle.

The agents, assigned to protect Naomi Biden, 29 and the daughter of Hunter Biden, were out with her in the Georgetown neighborhood late Sunday night when they saw the three people breaking a window of the parked and unoccupied SUV, the Secret Service said in a statement.

Around 11:58 pm ET, one of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck by the gunfire. The incident took place near Naomi Biden's Georgetown home, NBC News reported.

. . . 'During this encounter, a federal agent discharged a service weapon and it is believed no one was struck,' the Secret Service said.

. . . It is unclear if Naomi Biden heard the shooting but she was made aware of the incident afterward, sources told ABC News.

At one point in my career, I was a technical writer for a Los Angeles City agency, in which position I had frequent reference to LAPD policies. As part of becoming familiar with police work, I discovered that law enforcement agencies take any discharge of an officer's weapon under any circumstance very seriously. This can include an accidental discharge while off duty that causes no injury, but it can range all the way to a shooting by an officer in self-defense that leads to a fatality. The circumstances under which a firearm discharge is "in policy" are carefully circumscribed, and every shooting is thoroughly investigated.

Current LAPD policy on use of force is typical of civilian police agencies:

Officers may use deadly force [i.e., shooting] only when they reasonably believe, based on the totality of circumstances, that such force is necessary in defense of human life. Officers who use unreasonable force degrade the confidence of the community we serve, expose fellow officers to physical hazards, violate the law and rights of individuals upon whom unreasonable force or unnecessary deadly force is used, and subject the Department and themselves to potential civil and criminal liability.

The best I can conclude from the media accounts of the Georgetown incident is that the Secret Service protectee, Naomi Biden, was not with the agents at the time the attempted burglary on the fedmobile occurred. She was apparently in no danger and apparently inside a residence while the agents were waiting outside, or something like that. Under typical civilian police policy, just for starters, the use of deadly force wouldn't have been jusified to protect anyone's life in that circumstance, certainly not the Secret Service protectee. Beyond that, the LAPD policy says that "objectively reasonable" grounds for use of deadly force, i.e., discharging a firearm, include, among others,

• The seriousness of the crime or suspected offense;
• The level of threat or resistance presented by the subject;
• Whether the subject was posing an immediate threat to officers or a danger to the community;
• The potential for injury to citizens, officers or subjects[.]

The offense described in media accounts was breaking a window to burglarize an unoccupied vehicle. In California,

PC 459 auto burglary is a second-degree burglary – known as a “wobbler” – which means the prosecutor can charge the case as either a misdemeanor or felony. If convicted of misdemeanor auto burglary, you will be facing up to one year in county jail.

On one hand, District law may differ, but in any case, the Secret Service doesn't enforce the burglary law there; that's up to the Metropolitan Police. It may be a federal crime to vandalize a fedmobile, but again, that would be up to the FBI to investigate. The agent who discharged his firearm had no jurisdiction over the burglars, who objectively were not committing a crime serious enough to warrant use of a firearm in any case. So what happens to a civilian police officer who pops off a round at a guy burglarizing a vehicle? In response to a "shots fired" call:

The supervisor responds to the scene. Other officers take over any involvement the officer who did the shooting may have had with the incident at hand.

The supervisor takes the officer’s firearm from him.

. . . The officer is taken to a hospital or some other facility where blood is drawn for toxicology testing.

. . . The officer may or may not be interviewed or asked to make or write a statement about what happened for purposes of an internal policy investigation. If a statement is not made immediately, an interview may be scheduled in 48-72 hours. The officer cannot refuse to be interviewed. If he does, he can be charged with insubordination and his employment terminated. When the officer is interviewed, he is usually accompanied by legal counsel or a representative from the police officers’ association or union.

The officer is put on administrative leave.

. . . When the internal investigation is complete (this can take anywhere from a few days to months), the officer is required to appear before a “shooting board” to discuss the investigation, clarify any details, and identify any relevant police or training issues for future use. The officer is usually notified whether the shooting has been determined to be within policy or out of policy. If it is out of policy, the officer may be disciplined or his employment terminated. If the shooting is within policy, he may then have his firearm returned to him and any expended ammunition replaced.

From the accounts in the media, this firearm discharge would pretty clearly have been out of policy, and a civilian police officer who popped off a round at some car burglars would almost certainly have been off the force following a due process investigation. In fact, a civilian police officer who did this outside his jurisdiction would probably also have been deemed unstable and, even if he somehow kept his job, no longer eligible to carry a firearm.

So every media account of this episode has completely missed the point: a civilian police officer under those circumstances would have been deemed unfit to carry a weapon and likely off the force. What's happening to the Secret Service agent who shot his weapon out of policy? How was he hired? How was he kept on the force? Is he currently on administrative leave pending investigation and likely to be off the force? While the specifics of the investigation are confidential, the Secret Service should at minimum have announced the circumstances were under investigation, and media should have followed up.

There were two other agents there as well. What was their involvement? Did the supervisor turn up and relieve the one agent of his weapon? What "shots fired" procedures were followed? This whole thing should raise questions about the Secret Service equivalent to the 2012 "Wheels up" scandal.