> and by all means, request local police protection because that's what police is for
Local police in the US has been shown often enough to seriously lack training: 21 weeks on average [1] - that is ridiculous, even traffic cops in Germany have to pass through literally two and a half year of training, and another four years and a strict physical training regime for the high rank allowing them into personal protection details. Not to mention many police departments are already overwhelmed with responsibilities, have massive cultural problems on their own, or actually are underfunded - while ridiculous budgets like NYPD are so widely known they're almost a meme, many smaller PDs (and, associated, fire departments and EMTs) seriously struggle with funding to keep the lights on. Adding the workload required to provide somewhat decent amount of protection for exposed persons would completely bust a lot of them.
> There are very few people who should qualify for that.
IMO, the list is orders of magnitude longer - Members of Congress, members of the government, their publicly known top staff, leaders and deputy leaders of government agencies, on state level at least the governors and their cabinet, and the heads of major parties as well. That's for the US a couple thousand people, protection details shouldn't be that expensive given how large the US federal budget already is. Recent events, not just the events surrounding Jan 6th, but also all the other threats that have happened over the last years (and yes, I include the shooting of Republican Steve Scalise here), warrant it IMO to make sure at least the representatives and the most important people in government get the very best protection there is, independent of the country.
Local police in the US has been shown often enough to seriously lack training: 21 weeks on average [1] - that is ridiculous, even traffic cops in Germany have to pass through literally two and a half year of training, and another four years and a strict physical training regime for the high rank allowing them into personal protection details. Not to mention many police departments are already overwhelmed with responsibilities, have massive cultural problems on their own, or actually are underfunded - while ridiculous budgets like NYPD are so widely known they're almost a meme, many smaller PDs (and, associated, fire departments and EMTs) seriously struggle with funding to keep the lights on. Adding the workload required to provide somewhat decent amount of protection for exposed persons would completely bust a lot of them.
> There are very few people who should qualify for that.
IMO, the list is orders of magnitude longer - Members of Congress, members of the government, their publicly known top staff, leaders and deputy leaders of government agencies, on state level at least the governors and their cabinet, and the heads of major parties as well. That's for the US a couple thousand people, protection details shouldn't be that expensive given how large the US federal budget already is. Recent events, not just the events surrounding Jan 6th, but also all the other threats that have happened over the last years (and yes, I include the shooting of Republican Steve Scalise here), warrant it IMO to make sure at least the representatives and the most important people in government get the very best protection there is, independent of the country.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733