WASHINGTON (AP) – Three days before supporters of President Donald Trump revolted 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, said senior defense officials and two people familiar with the case.
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 loss of 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 roam the building for hours, while black and brown protesters who demonstrated last year about police brutality faced more robust and aggressive police duties.
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“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. But he said no contingency planning had been made ahead of time for what the troops could do in the event of a problem at the Capitol, because help from the Department of Defense was turned down. “They have to ask us, the request has to come to us,” McCarthy said.
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was forced to resign under pressure from Schumer, Pelosi, and other congressional leaders. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell filed for and received the resignation of Senate Arms Sergeant Michael Stenger effective immediately. Paul Irving, the old Sergeant at Arms of the House, also resigned.
“There was a failure of leadership at the top,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The U.S. Capitol had been closed to the public since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 360,000 people in the U.S. 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 had made statements about riots in Washington, 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 at fault in the responses of clearly overused front officers, but with the planning and leadership before the riot.
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“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”.
McCarthy said police intelligence estimates of the potential crowd leading up to the protests were “across the board,” from a low of 2,000 to as much as 80,000.
So the Capitol Police had not set up a hard perimeter around the Capitol. Officers were focused on the one side where lawmakers came to vote to certify Biden’s victory.
Barricades were placed in the square in front of the building, 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.
Sund, the capitol police chief, said he expected a display of “ First Amendment activity ” turning into a “ violent assault ” instead. But Gus Papathanasiou, head of the Capitol Police union, said scheduling errors exposed cops without backup or equipment against the rising crowds of rioters.
“We were fortunate that more of those who breached the Capitol had no firearms or explosives and had no malicious intent,” Papathanasiou said in a statement. “As tragic as the deaths caused by the attack are, we are fortunate that the number of victims was not higher.”
The Justice Department, the FBI, and other agencies began tracking hotels, flights, and social media for weeks, expecting large 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.
“We asked more than once and the last result we got on Sunday the 3rd was that they weren’t going to ask DOD for help,” he said.
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 a challenge, but I can’t answer why those people weren’t tied up 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.