It was bad enough that the US Secret Service agents surrounding Donald Trump during last Saturday’s assassination attempt appeared distracted as they fumbled with the holsters holding their guns. But it has now emerged that they took a conscious decision not to put operatives on the roof from where shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was later to launch his attack. Why? Because doing so would pose a health-and-safety risk. Apparently, the sloped roof used by Trump’s would-be assassin was deemed ‘too dangerous’ for agents to use. Such institutionalised cowardice ought to disturb every public figure facing the threat of political violence.

This risk-averse culture is not limited to the Secret Service. It is prevalent within law-enforcement agencies, too. This was illustrated by the police response two years ago to the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Almost 400 officers responded to the incident, in which a lone gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. Yet they refrained from immediately confronting the shooter while he was in a classroom filled with students and several teachers. In fact, they waited for more than an hour for a Border Patrol tactical team to arrive before they went in and took the shooter down. Had they intervened earlier, they could have saved the lives of many of those who were later shot dead.

Risk-aversion within the police is causing similar problems in the UK, too. This was brought home by a tragic incident in Surrey in 2016. After a man had fallen into the River Thames, local police officers arrived at the scene to help him. But a police inspector then ordered his officers not to attempt a rescue. The inspector later explained his decision, saying that his officers lacked the necessary training: ‘I felt the risk was too great in those circumstances.’ The image of a group of police officers watching from the riverbank as a man drowned in front of them was truly shocking. Those with a duty to protect the public from harm signally failed to do so.