WASHINGTON (AP) – Three days before the pro-President Donald Trump riot in the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the US Capitol Police if it needed manpower from the National Guard. And while the mob entered the building On Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer FBI agents. Police turned them down both times, a defense official and two people familiar with the case said.
Despite numerous warnings of a possible uprising and sufficient resources and time to prepare, the Capitol Police only planned a demonstration of freedom of speech.
Still reeling from the uproar over law enforcement’s violent response to protests at the White House last June, officials also planned to avoid any appearance of the federal government deploying active duty or National Guard troops against Americans.
As a result, the U.S. Capitol was overrun on Wednesday, and law enforcement agents with a large working budget and experience of high-security events protecting lawmakers were overwhelmed for the world to see. Four protesters were killed, including one shot in the building.
The riots and the loss of police control have raised serious questions about the security of the Capitol for future events. The day’s actions also raise troubling concerns about the treatment of mostly white Trump supporters who were allowed to wander the building for hours, while black and brown protesters who demonstrated last year about police brutality faced more robust and aggressive policing.
“This was a failure of the imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose department responded to several major protests last year after George Floyd’s death. “The Capitol Police need to do better and I don’t see how we can get around that.”
Acevedo said he attended events at the Capitol to honor murdered police officers who had higher fences and a stronger security presence than what he saw on video on Wednesday.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that while the riots were going on, it became apparent that the Capitol police were being overrun. No contingency planning had been made in advance of what the armed forces could do in the event of a problem at the Capitol. “They have to ask us, the request has to come to us,” McCarthy said.
The day after the disaster, the House sergeant-at-arms, the chief security officer of the House of Representatives, had resigned and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Had called for the resignation of the Capitol Police Commissioner.
“There was a failure of leadership at the top,” said Pelosi.
Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., the incoming majority leader, said he will fire the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.
The Capitol had been closed to the public since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 350,000 people. But normally the building is open to the public and lawmakers are proud of their availability to their constituents.
It is not clear how many agents were on duty Wednesday, but the complex is guarded by a total of 2,300 agents for 16 acres of land protecting the 435 House Representatives, 100 US Senators and their staff. In comparison, the city of Minneapolis has approximately 840 uniformed officers overseeing a population of 425,000 in an area of 6,000 acres.
For weeks, there were signs that violence could strike on January 6, when Congress met for a joint session to end the electoral college votes that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden had won the presidential election.
Plans were being made on far-right bulletin boards and in pro-Trump circles.
The leader of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys was arrested this week as he entered the country’s capital on charges of carrying empty high-capacity magazines with their logo on them. He admitted to police that he was making statements about riots in the District of Columbia, local officials said.
Both Acevedo and Ed Davis, a former Boston Police Commissioner who led the department during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, said they were not critical of the responses from clearly oversized front-line officers, but of the planning and leadership before the riot.
“Was there such a structural feeling, these are a bunch of conservatives, they’re not going to do something like that? Maybe, ”Davis said. “That’s where the racial component of this comes into play in my mind. Was there a lack of urgency or a feeling that this could never happen with this crowd? Is that possible? Absolutely.”
Trump and his allies were arguably the biggest megaphones, encouraging protesters to take effect and support his false claim that the election had been stolen from him. He urged them to a rally shortly before they marched to the Capitol and rebelled. His personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor known for his tough stance on crime, called for “trial by battle”.
But the Capitol Police had not set up a hard outline around the Capitol. Officers were focused on the one side where lawmakers came to vote to certify Biden’s victory.
Barricades in the square to the building were set up, but the police withdrew from the queue and a crowd of people broke through. Lawmakers, initially unaware of the security breach, are continuing their debate. Soon they were huddled under chairs. Eventually they were escorted from the House of Representatives and the Senate. Journalists were left alone in rooms for hours while the crowd tried to break into barricaded rooms.
“The violent assault on the Capitol was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed in my 30 years of law enforcement here in Washington, DC,” said Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, explaining there had been a robust plan he had. expects it to reflect activities of the first amendment. But make no mistake – these massive riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal dissolute behavior. “
Gus Papathanasiou, head of the Capitol Police union, called for Sund’s replacement, saying that scheduling errors left officers without backup or equipment exposed to the rising crowds.
“We cannot leave our officers and the Capitol Hill community they protect to the mercy of further attacks amid a vacuum of leadership,” he said.
FBI and other law enforcement officials began monitoring hotels, flights and social media for weeks expecting huge crowds. Mayor Muriel Bowser had been warning of imminent violence for weeks and businesses had been closed in anticipation. She asked the National Guard for help from the Pentagon on Dec. 31, but Capitol Police declined the Jan. 3 offer from the Department of Defense, said Kenneth Rapuano, assistant defense secretary for homeland security.
The Justice Department’s offer for FBI support when the protesters turned violent was turned down by Capitol Police, according to the two people familiar with the case. They were not authorized to discuss the matter in public and spoke on condition of anonymity.
It was too late then.
Agents from the Metropolitan Police Department came down. Agents from almost every Department of Justice, including the FBI, were called in. This also applied to the Secret Service and the Federal Protection Service. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent two tactical teams. Police went as far as New Jersey to help.
It took four hours to expel the protesters from the Capitol complex. By this time, they had roamed the halls of Congress, posed for pictures in sacred chambers, broken through doors, smashed property, and took pictures of themselves doing it. Only 13 were arrested at the time, scores were later arrested.
In the aftermath, a 2-meter high fence will be built around the Capitol for at least 30 days. Capitol Police will review the massacre and their planning and policies. Lawmakers plan to investigate how authorities dealt with the riots.
Acting US attorney in the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, said the inability to arrest more people makes their job more difficult.
“Look, now we have to go through the cell phone orders, collect video footage to identify people and then charge them, and then try to execute their arrest. So that made it difficult, but I can’t answer why those people weren’t tied with zippers when they left the building by the Capitol Police. “
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Associated Press authors Ben Fox, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.