Is the Secret Service trying to signal support for Donald Trump? Probably not but while Trump talks about building a big wall the Secret Service is talking about building a bigger fence around the White House. Yesterday NBC4 got access to an audio recording of a Secret Service briefing in which agents outlined the need for a new 11-foot fence:

“The current fence simply is not adequate for a modern era. We’ve said that before. It is becoming more and more acutely clear that that is in fact the case,” Secret Service official Tom Dougherty said in the briefing to federal officials.” “(The fence) is entirely scale-able, depending upon the circumstances. And we have now a society that tends to want to jump over the fence and onto the 18 acres,” Daugherty said in the briefing. According to the Secret Service briefing, the agency’s plans would raise the current 6-foot-tall fence to 11 feet. A new concrete “footing” and “foundation” for the fence are also planned.

NBC4’s report also contained an image of the new fence taken from the Secret Service briefing:

Secret Service Plans to Raise White House Fence by 5 Feet https://t.co/ZZVhVniZnz #DC pic.twitter.com/8HSPlUiFaE — Washington DC News (@washdcnews) April 28, 2016

In addition to being taller the new fence will also be much stronger. According to NBC4 those 11-foot pickets are 1 3/4″ thick.

The reason for this change isn’t difficult to discern. There have been a host of fence jumpers in the last few years. In fact, the White House was put on lockdown twice just this week. The first incident on Tuesday involved a robber who jumped the fence near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Then on Wednesday morning someone tossed items over the fence resulting in another lockdown that lasted two hours. Several of the recent fence jumpers have been caught on camera:

That incident a few months ago came after the security of the fence had been upgraded by the addition of spikes along the top of the fence. The jumper was apparently able to defeat that upgrade by wearing gloves. NBC4 published this story including audio from the Secret Service briefing on Wednesday: