WASHINGTON (AP) – Three days before President Donald Trump’s riot at the Capitol, the Pentagon called on the U.S. Capitol Police if he needed labor from the National Guard. And as the crowd descended on the building On Wednesday, Justice Department leaders contacted to offer FBI agents. Police rejected them on both occasions, according to a defense officer and two people familiar with the matter.
Despite many warnings about a possible insurgency and ample resources and time to prepare, Capitol police were only planning a demonstration of free speech.
Still emerging from the uproar over law enforcement’s violent response to last June’s protests near the White House, officials also intended to avoid any appearance that the federal government was deploying service troops. active or the National Guard against the Americans.
The result is that the U.S. Capitol overflowed on Wednesday and police agency officers with a large operating budget and experience in high-security events protecting lawmakers were overwhelmed for the world to see them. Four protesters were killed, including a shot inside the building.
Riots and loss of control by people have raised serious questions about security at the Capitol for future events. The day’s actions also raise troubling concerns about the treatment primarily of white Trump supporters who were allowed to walk around the building for hours, while the black and brown protesters who demonstrated last year for police brutality they faced more robust and aggressive policing.
“This was a failure of the imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Art Acevedo, Houston police chief, whose department responded to several major protests last year after George Floyd’s death. “Capitol police need to do better and I don’t see how we can prevent it.”
Acevedo said he has attended events on Capitol grounds 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 as the riots were underway, it became apparent that Capitol Police were being invaded. No contingency planning was done in advance on what 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 fury, the House Sergeant at Arms, the head of the House of Representatives security, had resigned and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of D-California had called for the resignation of the police chief. of the Capitol.
“There was a leadership failure at the top,” Pelosi said.
Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., the new majority leader, said he will fire the Senate arms sergeant.
The U.S. 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 its availability for its components.
It is unclear how many officers were on guard Wednesday, but the complex is guarded by a total of 2,300 officers on 16 acres of land protecting the 435 House representatives, 100 U.S. senators and their staff. In comparison, the city of Minneapolis has about 840 uniformed officers guarding a population of 425,000 in an area of 6,000 acres.
There were signs for weeks that violence could strike on Jan. 6, when Congress convened a joint session to finish counting the Electoral College votes that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden had won the presidential election.
Plans were being drawn up on far-right message boards and pro-Trump circles.
The leader of far-right group Proud Boys was arrested entering the country’s capital this week accused of weapons for carrying empty high-capacity magazines with his logo. He admitted to police that he made 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 did not blame the responses of clearly outdated front-line officers, but the planning and leadership before the riot.
“There was a structural feeling that well, this is a group of conservatives, who won’t do anything like that? Very possibly,” Davis said. “This is where the racial component comes into play. Was there a lack of urgency or the feeling that this could never happen to this crowd? Is this possible? Absolutely. ”
Trump and his allies were perhaps the biggest megaphones, encouraging protesters to come out strongly and support their false claim that the election had been stolen from them. He drove them during a rally shortly before they marched on the Capitol and revolted. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor known for his tough stance against crime, called for a “combat trial.”
But Capitol police had not set any hard perimeter around the Capitol. Officials were focused on a side where lawmakers came in to vote to certify Biden’s victory.
Barricades were set up in the building square, but police withdrew from the line and a crowd of people burst in. Lawmakers, initially unaware of the security breach, continued their debate. After a while they crouched under the chairs. Eventually, they were escorted out of the House and Senate. Journalists were left alone in the rooms for hours as crowds tried to break into barricaded rooms.
“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was different from anything I’ve experienced in my 30 years in the police here in Washington, DC,” said Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who explained that there there had been a solid plan of what he hoped would be a sample of First Amendment activities. “But let’s not be fooled: these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were rude criminal behavior. “
Gus Papathanasiou, head of the Capitol Police union, called for Sund to be replaced, saying planning failures left officers exposed without backup or equipment against crowds.
“We cannot leave our officers and the Capitol Hill community protecting at the mercy of further attacks amid a leadership vacuum,” he said.
FBI and other law enforcement officials began monitoring hotels, flights and social media for weeks and were expecting massive crowds. Mayor Muriel Bowser had warned of the impending violence for weeks and business had closed in advance. On December 31, he called for help from the National Guard at the Pentagon, but Capitol police turned down the Department of Defense’s Jan. 3 offer, according to Kenneth Rapuano, deputy secretary of national security defense.
According to the two people familiar with the matter, Capitol police rejected the Justice Department’s offer to support the FBI as the protesters were violent. They were not allowed to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
By then it was too late.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department descended. They were called agents from almost every Justice Department agency, including the FBI. So did the Secret Service and the Federal Protection Service. The Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent two tactical teams. Police as far away as New Jersey came to help.
It took four hours to disperse the protesters from the Capitol complex. They had then toured the halls of Congress, posed for pictures in the consecrated chambers, broken down doors, destroyed property, and taken pictures of themselves doing so. At that time, only 13 were arrested, more than a series of arrests.
Then a 7-foot fence will climb around the Capitol precinct for at least 30 days. Capitol police will conduct a review of the killing, as well as its planning and policies. Lawmakers plan to investigate how authorities handled the riots.
U.S. District Attorney in the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, said the failure to arrest more people is hampering his work.
“Look, now we have to review cell site orders, collect video images to try to identify people and then upload them, and then try to execute their arrest. So this has made things challenging, but I can’t answer why these people weren’t zipped when they left the building by the Capitol police. “
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Associated Press writers Ben Fox, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.