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Jason S. on April 25, 2017 at 2:36 pm

The further you push the fences, the tougher it is to patrol. That’s simple geometry, and for the life of me, I don’t know why it goes overlooked so often. The secured perimeter will increase as a result of this change. Unless you correspondingly increase the number of Secret Service agents patrolling the larger perimeter, this means each agent has to patrol a larger section of fence line.  This makes security breaches more likely.

If the goal is to increase security at the White House complex, this plan fails miserably.  The plan makes breaches more likely throughout the complex while only giving the agency another second or two of reaction time on a southern end with a ton of reaction time already.  

If the goal is to justify a higher budget to bring on more Secret Service agents, this plan is perfect.  The Secret Service can point out that the fence is X% bigger justifying an X% higher budget allocation.  When breaches inevitably become more common thanks to the poor design, that trend line will be used to justify another Y% on top of the X%.  

Is that intentional?  Probably not.  The Secret Service is likely doing what they think will best protect the President.  Still though, although it's counter-intuitive, the security enhancements seemingly make the security problem worse before even touching all the urban design aspects.

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