Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., has hired a personal security assistant to protect himself and his staff. But Grimm, a former Marine and FBI agent, took pains on MSNBC to say the man isn’t a bodyguard.
“He’s not my bodyguard. … Whenever we have a large event where
there will be a large number of volunteers and people showing up, you have to have security… to control the crowd.”
Grimm says the man is a retired New York City Police Department detective. And Grimm says he planned to hire the man even before the tragic Tucson shooting earlier this month of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
The security man will have other duties to benefit constituents too, but will function as security at public events and will travel with the congressman. The hire was made for the sake of his staff and constituents, Grimm says.
Concern has emerged that congressmen will be less accessible to their constituents in the wake of the Giffords shooting, and Grimm’s move may spark more worries along those lines. But he is the only one of Brooklyn’s six congressmen to hire personal security.
Grimm served as a marine in the Persian Gulf War. He also worked as an FBI agent in New York City, investigating organized crime and Wall Street corruption, according to his web biography.
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