Politics

Fresh Problems for Secret Service: Are Leaders Doing Enough?

Published

9 years ago

March 13, 2015

In this May 23, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama pauses as he shakes hands with people in the crowd after speaking at College Green in Dublin, Ireland. Mark Connolly, the second-in-command on President Barack Obama’s security detail, far left. The Homeland Security Department is investigating two senior Secret Service agents accused of crashing a car into a White House security barrier, an agency spokesman says. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

JOSH LEDERMAN, Associated Press
ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest in a string of baffling missteps by the Secret Service prompted fresh questions Thursday about whether the Obama administration has done enough to root out deep-seated problems plaguing the agency — and President Barack Obama’s decision to put an insider in charge despite his administration’s own review that called for exactly the opposite.

The White House said Obama still has full confidence in recently appointed Director Joseph Clancy, despite a new investigation into two agents accused of driving into White House security barrier after drinking. While declining to discuss the investigation, Obama’s aides described Clancy as the right man to fix problems.

“Nobody has higher standards for the Secret Service than Director Clancy,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz.

Yet lawmakers charged with overseeing the agency were aghast and wondered how — after intense national scrutiny and a rotating cast of directors — the Secret Service still hasn’t corrected problems involving behavior of its agents. In a rare move, the top Republican and Democrat on the House’s oversight panel joined forces to say that while many of the agency’s top leaders have already been replaced, “this incident begs the question of whether that is enough.”

“Clearly this incident is a major wake-up call,” the Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said later in an interview.

The two senior agents — including Mark Connolly, the No. 2 on Obama’s security detail — had been with other agents drinking at a bar last week when they returned to the White House in a government car, a U.S. official said. The vehicle entered an area already closed off by the Secret Service, who were investigating a suspicious package and had put the White House on lockdown. Officers on the scene saw the agents’ car, traveling slowly, make contact with a barrier, the official said.

A surveillance video at the White House captured the entire incident, the official said. Congressional staffers were briefed Thursday on the video’s contents.

In a stroke of irony, the agents had been attending a retirement party for the Secret Service’s spokesman, Ed Donovan, whose job for many years involved answering questions from the press after other embarrassing incidents.

Obama knew both agents personally. The two have been reassigned to nonsupervisory, non-operational jobs, a second official said. The officials weren’t authorized to comment on an ongoing investigation and requested anonymity.

The Secret Service’s response to the incident, first disclosed by the Washington Post, has also come under scrutiny amid a report by that newspaper that a supervisor directed officers on-scene not to perform a field sobriety test on the two agents, and to let them go home. Cummings said that raised serious questions about whether Secret Service agents believe they can follow their own set of rules.

Cummings and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the oversight committee, sent a letter Thursday to Clancy asking him to brief them on the incident and provide the panel with any video footage, photographs or audio recordings.

“The bottom line is the Secret Service has to be overhauled,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “What happened the other day shows we have a ways to go and that the overhaul is needed soon and very deeply.”

Yet with Obama standing by Clancy, it remained unclear what additional steps could or would be taken to bring the struggling agency in line.

When former Director Mark Sullivan resigned in 2013, the year after a drinking-and-prostitution scandal in Colombia rocked the agency, Obama tapped longtime Secret Service agent Julia Pierson to take over amid hopes she would change the male-dominated culture. Less than two years later, Pierson resigned abruptly in the wake of security breaches.

First, a man with a knife who scaled the White House fence made it far inside the mansion before agents stopped him. Then, as lawmakers started asking questions, it came to light that the Secret Service earlier had improperly allowed Obama to share an elevator in Atlanta with an armed, private guard — and failed to tell him about it after the fact.

Amid a public uproar, the Obama administration commissioned an outside report by former senior government officials that concluded the agency was too insular — and recommended that Obama bring in an outsider to whip the agency into shape. Obama ignored that recommendation and brought in Clancy — a retired agent who once ran Obama’s security detail — as interim director, then named him to the full post in February.

The storied Secret Service, despite its reputation as the world’s leading protective agency, has a history of alcohol-related incidents.

In 2012, an officer was arrested after passing out drunk on a Miami street corner about 12 hours after a presidential visit. Two years later an agent was involved in a drunken incident during a trip to the Netherlands. That same year two agents in Florida were involved in a traffic accident that reportedly involved alcohol.

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Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

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On Twitter, follow Josh Lederman at www.twitter.com/joshledermanAP and Alicia A. Caldwell at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

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MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

Published

4 days ago

April 20, 2024

Oakland Post

Mayor London Breed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

***PRESS RELEASE***

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

HUD’s Continuum of Care grant will support the City’s range of critical services and programs, including permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and improved access to housing for survivors of domestic violence

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program is designed to support local programs with the goal of ending homelessness for individuals, families, and Transitional Age Youth.

This funding supports the city’s ongoing efforts that have helped more than 15,000 people exit homelessness since 2018 through City programs including direct housing placements and relocation assistance. During that time San Francisco has also increased housing slots by 50%. San Francisco has the most permanent supportive housing of any county in the Bay Area, and the second most slots per capita than any city in the country.

“In San Francisco, we have worked aggressively to increase housing, shelter, and services for people experiencing homelessness, and we are building on these efforts every day,” said Mayor London Breed. “Every day our encampment outreach workers are going out to bring people indoors and our City workers are connecting people to housing and shelter. This support from the federal government is critical and will allow us to serve people in need and address encampments in our neighborhoods.”

The funding towards supporting the renewal projects in San Francisco include financial support for a mix of permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and transitional housing projects. In addition, the CoC award will support Coordinated Entry projects to centralize the City’s various efforts to address homelessness. This includes $2.1 million in funding for the Coordinated Entry system to improve access to housing for youth and survivors of domestic violence.

“This is a good day for San Francisco,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to a diversity of programs and projects that have helped people to stabilize in our community. This funding is a testament to our work and the work of our nonprofit partners.”

The 2024 Continuum of Care Renewal Awards Include:

$42.2 million for 29 renewal PSH projects that serve chronically homeless, veterans, and youth
$318,000 for one new PSH project, which will provide 98 affordable homes for low-income seniors in the Richmond District
$445,00 for one Transitional Housing (TH) project serving youth
$6.4 million dedicated to four Rapid Rehousing (RRH) projects that serve families, youth, and survivors of domestic violence
$750,00 for two Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) projects
$2.1 million for three Coordinated Entry projects that serve families, youth, chronically homeless, and survivors of domestic violence

In addition, the 2023 CoC Planning Grant, now increased to $1,500,000 from $1,250,000, was also approved. Planning grants are submitted non-competitively and may be used to carry out the duties of operating a CoC, such as system evaluation and planning, monitoring, project and system performance improvement, providing trainings, partner collaborations, and conducting the PIT Count.

“We are very appreciative of HUD’s support in fulfilling our funding request for these critically important projects for San Francisco that help so many people trying to exit homelessness,” said Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. “This funding will make a real difference to people seeking services and support in their journey out of homelessness.”

In comparison to last year’s competition, this represents a $770,000 increase in funding, due to a new PSH project that was funded, an increase in some unit type Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and the larger CoC Planning Grant. In a year where more projects had to compete nationally against other communities, this represents a significant increase.

Nationally, HUD awarded nearly $3.16 billion for over 7,000 local homeless housing and service programs including new projects and renewals across the United States.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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April 19, 2024

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Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Issues Statement on Deaths of Humanitarian Aid Volunteers in Gaza 

On April 2, a day after an Israeli airstrike erroneously killed seven employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a humanitarian organization delivering aid in the Gaza Strip, a statement was release by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12). “This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

By California Black Media

“This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

The same day, it was confirmed by the organization that the humanitarian aid volunteers were killed in a strike carried out by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Prior to the incident, members of the team had been travelling in two armored vehicles marked with the WCF logo and they had been coordinating their movements with the IDF. The group had successfully delivered 10 tons of humanitarian food in a deconflicted zone when its convoy was struck.

“This is not only an attack against WCK. This is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the direst situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, chief executive officer of World Central Kitchen.

The seven victims included a U.S. citizen as well as others from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Palestine.

Lee has been a vocal advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza and has supported actions by President Joe Biden to airdrop humanitarian aid in the area.

“Far too many civilians have lost their lives as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reprehensible military offensive. The U.S. must join with our allies and demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire – it’s long overdue,” Lee said.