The U.S. Secret Service and local law enforcement officials stated that there are no plans to change the security protocols for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, despite the unsuccessful attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life during a rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday.
Police reaffirmed their faith in the security system currently in place and declared that their security perimeter will not change, according to a report.
“We’re not anticipating any changes to our operational security plans for this event,” said the Secret Service’s RNC coordinator, Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, while declining to answer several questions about Saturday’s events in Pennsylvania, citing her RNC-specific jurisdiction.
“Gibson-Cicchino emphasized that the security planning in Milwaukee has been underway for 18 months and has already been designated the highest level of security event. Pressed about specific threats to this week’s gathering, Michael Hensle, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Milwaukee, said that there is ‘no known specific articulated threat to the RNC during or any specific individual attendee’ but that there are higher levels of online ‘chatter’ about the assassination attempt,” NBC News reported.
According to FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate in a separate news briefing earlier on Sunday, there has been a significant increase in online threats of violence since the incident, which were already on the rise.
Police Chief Jeffrey Norman stated that the city is unable to ban guns anywhere in Milwaukee because of state restrictions. This is due to the likelihood of guns being present in the soft security perimeter surrounding the Fiserv Forum arena, where the convention will take place, as a result of Wisconsin’s open-carry legislation.
“We as a city cannot legislate out of that,” Norman said of the state’s open-carry allowances, adding that from a “law enforcement aspect, we have to operate within those guidelines.”
Earlier, Trump said he had considered shaving a couple of days off his attendance at the convention and just showing up ahead of his planned acceptance speech on Thursday following the assassination attempt. But he announced on his Truth Social platform he changed his mind and will be traveling to Milwaukee on Monday.