A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.
Four days after a gunman assassinated a top health insurance executive in Midtown Manhattan and vanished, the unidentified suspect has, in some quarters, been venerated as something approaching a folk hero.
After some recent events I read Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. It includes bit on how well trained, extremely prepared USSS agents were unable to stop a single practice gunman whose identity they knew. All variables were in their favor and they were far more competent than hired security will be. I’ve included an excerpt at the end.
Corporate security will not stop someone willing to go to jail or die for it, such as someone terminally ill and fucked by their insurance. Media puff pieces overstating security effectiveness— spread through outlets owned by the ultra wealthy— would be far more effective in preventing another event like this. Presumably the more people that know, the more emboldened they would be to repeat this heartbreaking, earth-shattering tragedy. Which would just be terrible. Certainly I would be horrified and thus suggest suppressing this info. We should be spreading how corporate security is infallible to protect heroes like Mr. Thompson’s peers so they can continue to be upstanding members of society.