Police departments in Northern Virginia announced they would increase the number of police on patrol for Halloween, after the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported vague threats of a possible terror attack planned for malls, shopping centers or other gathering places in the region on the holiday. No attack materialized, but Montgomery County did not appear to take the same approach.
The County either did not, or could not, muster the same number of personnel yesterday. Or it deployed undercover officers instead, in a different approach. In downtown Silver Spring, a typical uniformed police presence was seen around Ellsworth Place and Downtown Silver Spring on Sunday, with a pair of officers patrolling on bicycles.
Montgomery County probably read the "threat", realized its source was a single screenshot, and chose not to waste taxpayer dollars.
ReplyDeleteThis threat was never reported (nor confirmed) by the FBI or DHS; part of the reason many people didn't take it seriously.
It mostly makes sense in light of the Virginia governor's race, where it's "that guy supports Trump" running against "that guy can't keep you safe."
The FBI and DHS not only reported the threat, but this was confirmed widely by the media, such as CNN, hardly a conservative network:
Deletehttps://www.cnn.com/2021/10/30/us/northern-virginia-possible-terror-plot-warnings/index.html
It had nothing to do with helping Glenn Youngkin, as all of the Virginia jurisdictions that stepped up police presence are Democrat-controlled.
In that light, the lack of police presence at major retail areas and malls this weekend was troubling, and County officials should be held accountable.
"The lack of police presence" minus all the police I saw and talked about in this article.
ReplyDeleteThe bike officers in the picture were the only police around at that time on Sunday. Not exactly a show of force, and less than on a regular day. There's usually a police cruiser parked by the theater, and even that was gone. Either our elected officials dropped the ball, or they found they didn't have the numbers to deploy in the way their Northern VA Democratic counterparts did. Neither is a good look, and fortunately one media outlet here is bringing this critical security failure to light.
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