Retired Lieutenant General Russel Honoré urged Congress to act and approve additional funds to fund critical changes to improve the U.S. Capitol police emergency response following the Jan. 6 insurgency.
“This is their police force, this is not happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. These are the police, two of them have died protecting them. It is time for Congress to act,” Honoré said. “They have to do this, they can’t wait for Jesus to come and fix it.”
U.S. Capitol Inspector General of Police Michael A. Bolton told lawmakers Thursday that an order banning officers from using their most powerful riot control weapons, such as fists and launchers of 40 mm, committed the Capitol on 6 January.
Bolton added that officers were told not to use these weapons because they could have been life-threatening and said the takeaway food is that officers should have been properly trained to use them.
Honoré led a working group to review the security of the U.S. Capitol following the January 6 insurgency and urged Congress to renew its security forces by adding 854 more officers and a rapid response unit.
Honoré told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that the U.S. Capitol is only safe now that the National Guard is there to support Capitol police. He also said that, structurally, the U.S. Capitol is unsafe as the doors and windows have not been fixed properly and the engineering fences have not yet been completed.
“The mission of Congress is to fund the police,” Honoré said. “We’ve now had two different reports, both the IG report and Working Group 1-6, which say we need more agents, and that won’t start until the supplement is funded.”