As a private citizen, my first thoughts after seeing the video of the recent attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump involved mostly anger and revulsion. However, as a retired police command officer with experience in preparing security preparations for presidential appearances, my questions, after a few minutes of analyzing the situation, became primarily about how the Secret Service could let such a thing happen.

I was involved in the preparations for four different presidential appearances in Lima. For one of those, the Ronald Reagan train visit to Lima’s East Wayne Street crossing, I was tasked with being in charge of local law enforcement preparations for the visit. That experience, which involved nearly two weeks of very long workdays alongside Mike Young, the Secret Service agent in charge of the visit, was an enlightening one. While I had been involved in three previous such events, I had never before been heavily involved in the inner workings and complexity of such an undertaking. It was mind-boggling.

An advance team of Secret Service agents showed up weeks in advance of the visit. One of their first tasks involved determining just who in this area might be a possible threat to the president. They conducted extensive interviews and background checks on local people with mental problems or a history of excessive vocal dissatisfaction with government in general.

Their primary duties involved securing the area where the train was to stop and Reagan was to disembark for his speech. The immediate area around the speech site was fairly simple to strengthen. Fencing, with just one entrance gate where metal detectors were placed, was a fairly simple task.

The big problem was the surrounding area, involving any location where a sniper could have line of sight to the president. There were numerous buildings that fit that description, and the preparations involved background checks on every person who worked in those buildings. In some cases, windows were nailed shut, and stairs leading to the roofs were secured. Secret Service sniper teams were also placed where they could observe all surrounding rooftops.

One interesting thing I heard much later came from an acquaintance who owned a business not far from, and in the line of sight of, the venue. He told me that about two weeks prior to the event, a man showed up at his business and asked for a job. The man had extensive experience in that field and was hired immediately. He worked diligently every day until the day of the event, and then disappeared, never to be seen again and never picking up his paycheck. The owner is convinced to this day that the man was a Secret Service plant, placed there to observe and check out the other employees.

As a former president and current presidential candidate, I would guess that the preparations for an event such as Trump’s campaign speech would not entail quite as many precautions as would be afforded a sitting president, but it is incomprehensible to me how a rooftop barely 400 feet from Trump, with a line of sight directly to him, could have been left so unguarded.

There are other questions so far unanswered, such as why so many people at the rally were able to point out the sniper, and one person even reported him climbing onto the roof with a weapon, but officers did not respond immediately.

Another question is why the anti-sniper riflemen stationed on a rooftop directly behind Trump obviously observed the sniper but waited until he fired before taking him out. Whether one likes it or not, a questionable person with a long-range weapon too far away to be challenged needs to be neutralized before getting off even one shot.

Conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this incident. I give little credence to conspiracy theories and find many of them laughable, such as the one that the Trump campaign set this up for the publicity. However, it is obvious that this incident has to be explained in its entirety, and someone needs to be held accountable for what appears to be an obvious lack of proper planning for the event.

Don Stratton is a retired inspector for the Lima Police Department. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Urbana Citizen editorial board or AIM Media, owner of the Urbana Citizen.