Ramon Rivera, 53, has been charged with murdering three innocent bystanders in a stabbing spree across New York City on Monday.
But the Washington Examiner can report that Rivera’s attacks only ended when State Department Diplomatic Security Service agents detained him near United Nations headquarters. While the New York Police Department has claimed sole responsibility for catching Rivera, it was DSS agents assigned to a protective detail for United Kingdom foreign secretary David Lammy who stopped Rivera and held him until NYPD officers arrived. The agents also provided emergency aid to a 36-year-old victim of the attacker, who later died in hospital.
Unfortunately, however, sources say that the courage of the generally early career stage agents responsible has gone unnoticed by DSS leadership. No supervisors attended the scene and no public recognition of the agents involved was provided by DSS or the State Department. Asked about this apparent failure of leadership, a State Department spokesperson simply stated to the Washington Examiner that “DSS special agents provided aid to the stabbed woman until EMS arrived; they also detained the alleged attacker until NYPD uniformed officers made their arrest.”
The problem here is twofold.
First, agents who acted with courage and care outside the normal conduct of their duties have not been recognized for doing so. As the Washington Examiner has previously reported, DSS today is characterized by extremely high protective detail workloads and associated burnout. In turn, the least these agents deserved was recognition from their leadership. Instead, one source with direct knowledge of the events told the Washington Examiner that when it came to DSS engagement with agents at the scene, “It was total chaos.”
Second, this example of DSS leadership disinterest for the welfare of lower ranking agents is only the tip of the iceberg. As the Washington Examiner has previously reported, senior leaders such as Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gentry Smith and DSS Director Carlos Matus have preferred to take junket trips to Las Vegas and divert resources to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives before the welfare and efficacy of their organization. DSS is renowned in the federal law enforcement community as an organization where “grunt agents” bear the burden of unpopular assignments while supervisors take office jobs or authorized leave. This extends to DSS leadership in New York City. The DSS field office in the Big Apple failed to make a single law enforcement investigation arrest in 2022 (as compared to 100+ arrests in preceding years).
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Other leadership failures include a major, evolving counterintelligence concern involving a senior DSS agent and Iran, and the DSS’s inability to match the diplomatic outreach of local law enforcement partners such as the NYPD and LAPD in garnering permission for DSS agents to carry firearms at the recent Paris Olympic Games. This undermined the ability of DSS agents to effectively protect Team USA athletes at the games.
As President-elect Donald Trump and Secretary of State-designee Marco Rubio move to take office in January, reforming this once proud organization should be foremost on their agenda.