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| A member of the Secret Service Uniformed Division at the White House on Monday. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press |
N.Y. TIMES
An Iraq war veteran on Friday scaled an iron fence and made his way through the front door of the White House before he was apprehended. He had 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car when law enforcement officers searched it after the incident.
It was subsequently learned that Secret Service officers stopped the man, Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, last month as he carried a hatchet in front of the White House, but let him go.
Most shocking, Gonzalez was let go even though he had been arrested in July in Virginia with a mini-arsenal of semiautomatic weapons, a sniper rifle and a map clearly marking the White House’s location.
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| Omar Gonzalez, in 2009, was believed to be living in his car. Credit Jerry Murphy, via Associated Press |
He was arrested in Virginia after the state police there found several loaded semiautomatic weapons in his car after a high-speed chase on Interstate 81. Virginia officials said Mr. Gonzalez was charged with reckless driving, one felony count of eluding police and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. He was released after posting a bond.
Among the items found in the vehicle in July were 11 guns, including two shotguns and four rifles, some equipped with scopes; and “a map of Washington, D.C., with writing and a line drawn to the White House,” law enforcement officials said. He also had four pistols, three of them loaded, and a revolver.
Relatives told the AP that Gonzalez suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and needs treatment. His sister said he is a kind, gentle man scarred by war. Gonzalez enlisted in the Army in 1997, served until 2003, and then re-enlisted in 2005 and retired in 2012, having served in Iraq from October 2006 to January 2008, the Army said.
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| Credit Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency |
Julia A. Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, said in an interview that she had ordered a “full fact-finding investigation into what didn’t work, where mistakes were made and how to ensure we prevent it in the future.”
In her job for about 18 months, Ms. Pierson was supposed to be the one to fix the agency’s reputation, which had been tarnished after a dozen agents were fired for having prostitutes in their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia, as they prepared for a presidential trip there in 2012.
In March, however, two Secret Service agents were sent home from Amsterdam after one of them got so drunk that he could not get into his hotel room and passed out in a hallway. That incident once again raised questions about the agency’s culture and forced Ms. Pierson to implement new policies to curb drinking. And the episode Friday on the front lawn of the White House — along with the reports of Mr. Gonzalez’s previous interactions with the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies — has raised more serious questions.
She said that Mr. Gonzalez seemed like other people who try to get into the White House or close to Mr. Obama, many of whom show symptoms of mental illness.
But the picture that emerged during Monday’s court hearing was a darker one, and it suggested that Secret Service officials had failed to follow standard procedures that might have alerted them to the possibility that Mr. Gonzalez posed a serious threat.
Under normal Secret Service procedures, the officers who stopped Mr. Gonzalez last month should have checked with agency officials whether databases showed him as having an arrest record or having made threats against the president or the White House. If the databases revealed that he had a violent history, the officers should have conducted a formal interview with Mr. Gonzalez at a small office the agency has near the White House or at its Washington field office.
Rikers Island Problems May Prompt U.S. Lawsuit.
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| The correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, shown with Mayor Bill de Blasio, faces pressure to enact reforms at Rikers Island. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times |
N.Y. TIMES
As alarm mounted this year over conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio largely managed to escape scrutiny, because the problems were rooted in its predecessor.
But on Monday, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan criticized the de Blasio administration for the first time, suggesting that New York officials were not moving quickly enough to make reforms at Rikers and warning that his office stood ready to file a civil rights lawsuit against the city to force changes.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney expressed strong concerns on Monday at the response by New York City officials to findings issued this summer by the United States attorney’s office of a “culture of violence” and rampant civil rights violations against adolescent inmates at Rikers Island.
He issued a statement that questioned the city’s commitment to make meaningful reforms. His statement cited a report in The New York Times, on Monday that city officials, in 2013, did not provide his office with key sections of a stinging internal review that found hundreds of fights between inmates at the adolescent jail at Rikers were omitted from departmental statistics and recommended demotions for the two wardens involved, William Clemons and Turhan Gumusdere. The article also noted that instead of being demoted, Mr. Clemons and Mr. Gumusdere now occupied some of the highest rungs of the department. Mr. Clemons is now the chief of department and Mr. Gumusdere is now the warden of the largest jail at Rikers.
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