Latest / Heroes Behind the Badge / Beyond the Presidential Protection Detail - Tim McCarthy's Law Enforcement Journey - Part 2

Transcript

Beyond the Presidential Protection Detail - Tim McCarthy's Law Enforcement Journey - Part 2 · Heroes Behind the Badge

• 0:08
  Welcome back to Heroes Behind the Badge.
• 0:11
  I'm Dennis Collins.
• 0:12
  Joined again by Craig Floyd and Bill Erth.
• 0:16
  In part one of our conversation with retired Secret service agent Tim McCarthy,
• 0:20
  we heard his firsthand account of the March 30th, 1981 assassination attempt.
• 0:26
  On President Reagan where Tim was shot protecting the president.
• 0:30
  We also discussed his analysis of the recent assassination
• 0:33
  attempts on former President Trump.
• 0:36
  And now in part two, we'll continue our conversation with Tim about Secret Service
• 0:41
  leadership, the justice systems handling of John Hinkley Jr. And his distinguished
• 0:47
  career as a police chief, Tim McCarthy.
• 0:49
  Thank you for continuing this important conversation with us
• 0:53
  Bill Erfurth has our next question.
• 0:56
  Do you have any opinion about the new Secret Service
• 0:58
  director that Trump appointed?
• 1:01
  I don't know him at all.
• 1:02
  Um, I, um, I don't even know much about his background prior to
• 1:10
  becoming, uh, the director, but the Secret Service needs a wider view.
• 1:16
  Of law enforcement by its director.
• 1:21
  The theory of the Secret service going back a long time ago when
• 1:26
  I started was we want agents going to the protective details.
• 1:31
  We have excelled in police work, investigative work on the street that
• 1:36
  is making arrests, search warrants, interviews, everything that goes
• 1:41
  into criminal investigations, dealing with people, dealing with, you know,
• 1:45
  pretty tough characters out in the street, that they demonstrate good
• 1:50
  judgment, sound judgment, sound tactics, things of that nature.
• 1:54
  That has been the model in, uh, in the past.
• 1:59
  For going to a protective detail.
• 2:02
  Um, I think we've gotten away from that largely because much of the
• 2:06
  investigative role of the Secret Service has now become cyber type.
• 2:10
  And I don't know that they're on the street as much as they used to be,
• 2:13
  but I don't know that for a fact.
• 2:15
  But I think we need someone with, with a broad view, and the new director may
• 2:19
  have that to talk about, reemphasizing it, not at the risk of, of not providing.
• 2:26
  The personnel for the presidential detail, but Secret Service
• 2:29
  has always been short staffed.
• 2:31
  We've never had the people that have been needed.
• 2:34
  Um, it's always been, you know, work people to death and, you
• 2:38
  know, work 30 days with no days off work, 12 hour shifts.
• 2:42
  And you, you wouldn't believe that we had a, uh, program we call you maxed out.
• 2:47
  In other words, you couldn't make more in a two week pay period than a congressman.
• 2:53
  So even though you work 30 days straight, no days off, 12 hour shifts
• 2:57
  and should have been paid a bunch of money, you weren't try to tell that
• 3:00
  to a policeman in this day and age that by the way, you're just gonna
• 3:04
  work and you're not gonna get paid.
• 3:06
  Uh, so there's it.
• 3:08
  I don't know that that's, I think they've corrected a little bit, but
• 3:11
  there's still problems, uh, in that area.
• 3:14
  So, um, things need to be, need to change if we want the protection.
• 3:21
  That you'd like to have, you need more people.
• 3:23
  It's, it's a, it's a people.
• 3:26
  Um, intense job.
• 3:28
  I mean, you just have to have the, the resources to do it.
• 3:31
  You can't use smoke and mirrors, uh, in, in,
• 3:34
  and I, I have to believe one of the problems with, uh, lack of resources,
• 3:38
  lack of manpower, is that you all have done such a, a tremendous job
• 3:42
  over these many, many years since, uh, president Kennedy was assassinated.
• 3:47
  Really?
• 3:48
  Um, there have been a limited number of attempts on, on a president's life.
• 3:53
  Secret Service has done your job?
• 3:55
  Yes.
• 3:55
  Uh, a lot of it behind the scenes, you know, uh, stopping, um, you know,
• 4:00
  a crisis before it ever started.
• 4:02
  Um, and, and this is probably why we became a bit complacent when it
• 4:06
  came to giving the proper resources to the Secret Service, my opinion.
• 4:11
  And, um, but, but, you know, kudos to you all.
• 4:14
  You and your colleagues at the Secret Service for doing
• 4:17
  such a fine job for so long.
• 4:19
  I wanna go back, uh, for a moment to John Hinkley.
• 4:24
  The, uh, he's the one that shoots the president.
• 4:27
  Uh, and then lo and behold, he's, uh, uh, innocent by reason of insanity.
• 4:33
  Uh, when everybody saw what he did, he obviously had planned this attack.
• 4:38
  It was premeditated, seems like a a, a capital one, uh, murder conviction to me.
• 4:45
  And yet he was, um, uh, found innocent by reason of insanity.
• 4:49
  And then in 2016, he was released permanently.
• 4:53
  From any confinement, and he is now roaming the streets of
• 4:56
  this country, uh, um, or, or was for many years, uh, since 2016.
• 5:02
  Your reaction to that, uh, do you, do you feel that, uh, that was a
• 5:05
  mistake to let him out when they did?
• 5:09
  Uh, Craig, he was in custody for a long, long time.
• 5:13
  We have a history of releasing presidential assassins.
• 5:16
  Sarah Jane Moore, squeaky from, had been released.
• 5:21
  All I've ever said about it is I hope they, they're right.
• 5:24
  They better be right because people need to be held accountable.
• 5:30
  If some, if one of our past assassins ever attempts something like this
• 5:36
  again and psychiatry, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's a science.
• 5:43
  I get it, but it's not an exact science.
• 5:46
  And no, no psychiatrist will tell you that.
• 5:49
  So.
• 5:50
  Uh, I think the things you said about pre-planning this and so forth didn't
• 5:59
  lead me to believe that it was insane.
• 6:01
  Now, is it insane to attack the president or kill someone?
• 6:04
  Of course it is, but it happens every day.
• 6:07
  Homicides occur by the hundreds on a daily basis.
• 6:10
  Um.
• 6:13
  People who have had far less planning and so forth and have been found, uh,
• 6:18
  and haven't been found to be insane.
• 6:20
  So I think it, uh, but it happened.
• 6:24
  Nothing you can do about it.
• 6:25
  But he was at St. Elizabeth's Hospital for almost 30, 40 years
• 6:29
  later and released, uh, personally.
• 6:33
  Um, I don't think they should have done it, but they did.
• 6:36
  And I hope they're right because.
• 6:40
  We, if President Ra, if any president is assassinated.
• 6:45
  And the Secret Service has done a superb job really over the years at
• 6:49
  great cost to our employees working their tails off and so forth.
• 6:53
  But the assassination of a president, um, let's take President Reagan
• 6:58
  for example, or President Kennedy.
• 7:01
  President Kennedy, we lost, we'll never know what his agenda,
• 7:04
  how it would've worked out.
• 7:07
  Who knows what the country lost when Kennedy was killed, what his
• 7:12
  agenda would've been, how he would've accomplished it, how he would've
• 7:15
  made the country a better place.
• 7:17
  How he might've made the world a more, a better place, a more peaceful place.
• 7:21
  We'll never know with Ronald Reagan, uh, he had many accomplishments.
• 7:27
  He was very consequential if he had been killed.
• 7:30
  President, uh, vice President Bush would've been president.
• 7:33
  Would he have done the same things?
• 7:35
  We'll, we'll, we'll never know.
• 7:36
  And, and we'd really, thankfully we, we don't know other than he
• 7:40
  did become president himself.
• 7:41
  So that's what this is all about.
• 7:44
  And we can't, you know, and, and furthermore, the people are,
• 7:47
  presidents are elected by the people.
• 7:50
  President Biden, you know, maybe we didn't disagree with everything he
• 7:54
  did, but he was elected by the people and he should serve his four years.
• 7:57
  I. And accomplish what he set out to do and only be removed from office
• 8:02
  at the ballot box or by impeachment.
• 8:05
  That's it.
• 8:06
  And same with President Reagan, ballot box or impeachment.
• 8:10
  Uh, and that's what we lose when we have an assassination of one of our presidents.
• 8:16
  You, you bring up President Kennedy and his assassination November 22nd, 1963.
• 8:23
  And, uh, it, there's a se legendary secret service agent Clint Hill, who
• 8:28
  recently passed away at the age of 93.
• 8:31
  I. And Clin Hill I know is, um, an icon, uh, in law enforcement.
• 8:36
  Certainly in the Secret Service.
• 8:38
  Obviously, you know, of Clin Hill.
• 8:40
  He's the secret service agent that leaped, uh, upon the limousine right after the
• 8:45
  first shots rang out when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
• 8:49
  I. And, uh, he talked in later years about how he was haunted by the fact
• 8:55
  that he could not save President Kennedy's life that day, and he
• 8:58
  wish he had reacted a bit sooner.
• 9:01
  Um, and he felt, uh, guilty, uh, and, and he had had terrible bouts
• 9:06
  with, uh, you know, dependency on alcohol and, uh, uh, other issues.
• 9:11
  Um, I'm just curious your reaction to that.
• 9:15
  Um, you having served protecting a president, uh, almost had one
• 9:20
  assassinated in, in your stead.
• 9:23
  Um, were you surprised that Clint Hill reacted the way he did and
• 9:27
  was haunted by, uh, president Kennedy's, uh, death the way he was?
• 9:32
  Well, as we know Craig, it's a classic case of PTSD, which we
• 9:36
  didn't recognize at the time.
• 9:38
  And even during my.
• 9:40
  The March 30th 81 incident, we didn't recognize it very well because rather than
• 9:44
  putting those agents on administrative leave that were involved, they were put on
• 9:48
  12 hour shifts and there was no follow-up counseling for a long time after that.
• 9:54
  Uh, Clint Hill, we all know he should not have felt guilty because
• 9:59
  no one could have other than.
• 10:01
  Now, you know, we don't have open limousines anymore.
• 10:04
  That ended, um, could have stopped what happened there unless Lee Harvey
• 10:10
  Oswald was detected and he wasn't.
• 10:13
  But, you know, he, he was a dedicated secret service agent.
• 10:18
  I don't blame him for fee.
• 10:19
  Feeling guilty.
• 10:20
  Um, you know, we lost a president as a result.
• 10:24
  The consequences will never know what they would've been or could
• 10:27
  have been if JFK remained president.
• 10:30
  But it was a classic case of PTSD that was never treated and it was treated as you
• 10:36
  pointed out, with alcohol and ultimately, you know, he left, left the job.
• 10:41
  So we lost a, a talented, dedicated person.
• 10:45
  It's a shame that it happened, but it was common in all of law
• 10:50
  enforcement, not just the Secret Service, but all of law enforcement.
• 10:54
  You know, that PTSD was not recognized, uh, at all as as a medical condition,
• 11:00
  and I. I feel terrible for Clinton, his family, but I also feel terrible
• 11:04
  for all the law enforcement officers around the country who've gone
• 11:07
  through horrible things and prior to the time when we started recognizing
• 11:12
  the, uh, severe psychological consequences of these types of
• 11:16
  events.
• 11:17
  And I think Clint, uh, by sharing his story, he wrote about it in several books.
• 11:22
  Uh, he talked about it in, uh, many interviews.
• 11:25
  Um, this man was a hero, a true hero behind the badge.
• 11:30
  Um, I got to know him over the years.
• 11:32
  He helped build the National Law Enforcement Museum.
• 11:34
  He did an oral history.
• 11:36
  With the museum to tell his story.
• 11:39
  Sure.
• 11:39
  And I think his story has helped, uh, to better, uh, deal with the, the PTSD, other
• 11:45
  mental health, uh, crises and challenges that law enforcement officers face.
• 11:49
  We've talked about it on this show before, that law enforcement
• 11:52
  officers deal with about 400 to 600.
• 11:55
  Traumatic events in their careers.
• 11:57
  Uh, and that's tough.
• 11:58
  And they need counseling.
• 12:00
  They need mental health support to, to cope with, uh, the stresses of the job.
• 12:05
  Bill, I, I wanted to turn to you 'cause I, I know, um, maybe in
• 12:08
  closing, we wanna talk to Tim about his post secret service career.
• 12:13
  He was a chief of police for 26 years in Orland Park, uh, Illinois.
• 12:18
  And, uh, he dealt with a lot of the, uh, challenges that we've talked about,
• 12:21
  the defunding and defaming of police.
• 12:24
  And, uh, perhaps you might want to get into that a little bit
• 12:27
  with, uh, the, the former chief.
• 12:30
  Yeah.
• 12:30
  Just to wrap this up and, and, and to talk about that, uh, this whole thing.
• 12:36
  And, and, and now Tim, you're, you're working in a, and working
• 12:41
  and have your own security business.
• 12:44
  Talk about that whole defund, defame, the police and, and how you
• 12:48
  see it and how it's affected things there in Chicago, in your eyes.
• 12:53
  Well, it, I think it is affected police across the country.
• 12:57
  I. It's obvious, it's very di the last, uh, re uh, in
• 13:02
  Illinois we test every two years.
• 13:04
  You can test less than that to create your list to hire from.
• 13:08
  Uh, in 20, I retired in 2020 and we had just done the,
• 13:12
  uh, had the test for police.
• 13:14
  We had over 400 people, uh, come to the orientation and then it drops off a
• 13:20
  little bit to about 350 to take the test.
• 13:23
  So they've had two tests since then.
• 13:26
  They barely have 50 people that show up for the orientation and take the test.
• 13:32
  Now, what it's turned to is lateral hiring.
• 13:36
  You know, the police can go from one department to the next,
• 13:39
  which I'm not a big fan of.
• 13:41
  Uh, there's a place for it, but I never used it.
• 13:45
  And we never enacted an ordinance to do it.
• 13:47
  But we were getting plenty of people.
• 13:49
  Our list would've ultimately a hundred, 150 people on it.
• 13:54
  Now it's not the same and the defund and, and really it's more the
• 13:58
  defaming, the police that I think has had terrible consequences that
• 14:05
  it's, it is a very proud profession and remains that way to this day.
• 14:09
  My father was a sergeant with the Chicago Police Department, grew up.
• 14:13
  You know, with all my friends, many, many went into law
• 14:16
  enforcement and that's what's hurt it, uh, more than anything else.
• 14:20
  Uh, but the officers are still out there.
• 14:22
  I had a great department, a great mayor to work for two mayors that I worked for.
• 14:26
  Um, they're, most of 'em are still out there doing the job.
• 14:30
  Uh, making the traffic stops.
• 14:33
  The, the, the covid thing hurt us too.
• 14:36
  'cause we backed off from policing a lot, making traffic stops and things like that.
• 14:41
  Uh, you know, and, and I think science has showed that, you know, it didn't,
• 14:46
  you know, all of this isolation didn't.
• 14:48
  It didn't amount to too much.
• 14:50
  I, I don't think that's my opinion.
• 14:51
  It may not be that of others.
• 14:53
  Uh, that hurt us too.
• 14:55
  But then you had the, the George Floyd event, which was a, a
• 14:58
  terrible mistake by law enforcement.
• 15:01
  But we go through thousands of, of incidents in the Chicago land, area of
• 15:08
  life threatening events by the police, and we largely handle them very well.
• 15:14
  And we're going to make mistakes either by commission or omission.
• 15:18
  In a profession where you have to make, uh, instantaneous decisions, the military
• 15:24
  makes them too, from time to time.
• 15:26
  And uh, one of the things about law enforcement, we never
• 15:30
  get out of the line of fire.
• 15:31
  I. Yeah, you go for training a week here, a week there, two weeks here, there.
• 15:36
  But you know, in, in the military they go into combat and see some
• 15:41
  absolutely horrible, horrible things.
• 15:43
  But usually they come out for retraining, refreshing, and getting away from it.
• 15:48
  Law enforcement, we don't do that.
• 15:50
  You have your, your vacation, but you're back on the firing line right afterwards.
• 15:54
  And I think we need to look at some type of furlough system to get police.
• 15:58
  Out of it, but the police are still doing a great job.
• 16:01
  But we've seen the Safety Act in Illinois.
• 16:04
  Has certainly been harmful to policing.
• 16:06
  Um, you know, it's, it's placed conditions on policing that
• 16:09
  we've never seen in the past.
• 16:12
  Uh, but the men and women in law enforcement, they're still out there
• 16:15
  doing their job and suffering the consequences because we still see our
• 16:20
  officers killed in the line of duty.
• 16:22
  The bad guys haven't gotten better, by the way.
• 16:25
  Uh, they haven't gotten better.
• 16:26
  They took advantage of, uh, COVID.
• 16:28
  They've taken advantage of the.
• 16:30
  Defaming defunding and things like the Safety Act, and hopefully the pendulum
• 16:35
  is moving back in the other direction.
• 16:38
  Um, I spent 22 years in the Secret Service and 26 years as a chief of
• 16:41
  police, where the average career is about three to five years as a chief.
• 16:45
  Uh, and both of 'em were remarkable careers.
• 16:49
  Uh, what I did like about, uh, uh, being a chief of police within your
• 16:54
  budget, within your union contracts.
• 16:56
  Uh, you set the agenda for your department, largely what you're
• 17:00
  gonna prioritize, equipment, tactics, protocols, and so forth.
• 17:04
  And of course, following all the state laws and your general orders, and it
• 17:08
  really gave you an opportunity, uh, to, um, fail or achieve success and success.
• 17:18
  You know, there's several, you know, successes judged by your crime stance.
• 17:22
  To a large degree, uh, injuries to your officers, longevity of your officers.
• 17:27
  There's a lot of metrics, but.
• 17:29
  You know, crime stats are pretty important.
• 17:31
  You're not to be there long if your crime stats are going through the roof.
• 17:35
  Uh, so I enjoyed the, the autonomy that I had as a chief of police.
• 17:39
  We had a mayor and boards that were, you know, uh, outstanding supporting
• 17:43
  the police, but keeping politics out of policing in the federal government, the
• 17:48
  agenda largely comes on the criminal justice side from Washington to a large.
• 17:53
  And that's not bad.
• 17:53
  It's just, you know, a different way of doing business.
• 17:56
  So I had some of the greatest agents.
• 17:59
  I had some agents that worked for me and I worked with that were some of the
• 18:03
  best cops God ever created in the same, in local law enforcement and, and, uh,
• 18:09
  you know, we need to work together and we did in task forces and so forth.
• 18:13
  Uh, I chaired for almost 15 years what we called a south
• 18:16
  suburban major crimes task force.
• 18:18
  Uh, there was a group of about 30 towns that we pooled our resources.
• 18:22
  In the form of intergovernmental agreement, a board what I was
• 18:25
  chair of, and handled about 50 homicides a year in our task force.
• 18:30
  And it was very rewarding because we had a 70% clearance rate at one
• 18:33
  time until we got a different state's attorney and had different views
• 18:37
  on charging crimes and so forth.
• 18:40
  But law enforcement is a great career.
• 18:42
  Uh, I still encourage kids, even people you know, that uh, have gone to college.
• 18:48
  Like I did that it's a great career in both our federal agencies, our
• 18:52
  local agencies, and you get some satisfaction in this job that I don't
• 18:56
  think you get in too many others.
• 18:58
  Um, uh.
• 19:00
  Uh, you know, when you solve a crime, when you put someone behind bars, when
• 19:04
  you help, uh, I got the picture behind me, the classic picture of, uh, the
• 19:09
  police officer with a, with a young boy.
• 19:11
  Yep.
• 19:12
  So if you like helping people, it's the greatest job in the world.
• 19:15
  Uh, I did 50 years of it.
• 19:18
  And, uh, I wouldn't mind doing 50 more.
• 19:21
  Hey, Tim, we could go on and on and on.
• 19:24
  I mean, this has been a fabulous interview.
• 19:27
  Uh, I wanna thank you again from Bill Craig and myself, and mostly on
• 19:34
  behalf of our listeners and viewers.
• 19:36
  You just got to hear another real story.
• 19:40
  From a real cop who placed himself right in the line of fire.
• 19:45
  I want to thank you retired Secret Service, special agent,
• 19:48
  Tim McCarthy, uh, for being on the Heroes Behind the Badge, uh, podcast.
• 19:54
  Tim, uh, I'll say this, uh, president Reagan was fortunate.
• 20:01
  American people.
• 20:02
  The American public was fortunate that you lost that coin toss on
• 20:06
  that day and you were on duty.
• 20:09
  I know you may not see it that way, but I think in the big picture, you did what
• 20:14
  needed to be done and you were on duty when you needed to be on that fateful day.
• 20:20
  Uh, no doubt.
• 20:22
  There's no doubt that your heroic action.
• 20:25
  Save the President's life.
• 20:27
  So again, uh, congratulations for a wonderful career.
• 20:31
  Thank you for being our guest.
• 20:34
  Well, thank you for having me, gentlemen.
• 20:35
  Ha.
• 20:35
  Have a great day.
• 20:37
  Thanks, Tim.
• 20:39
  Thanks, Tim.
• 20:40
  You're welcome.
• 20:40
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• 20:44
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