Outgoing Capitol police chief Steven Sund accused House and Senate security officials of obstructing multiple efforts before and during the Capitol riots to call the National Guard.
Healthy he told the Washington Post in an interview published Sunday night, the first since Wednesday’s events at the Capitol, which asked House and Senate security officials the days before Congress settled in the county, the College’s votes Electoral to allow the DC National Guard to wait in case troops were needed in front of the pro-President Trump
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But the Capitol police chief, who he was officially replaced like no Friday after his resignation, told the newspaper that officials denied the request.
Sund reported that House gun sergeant Paul Irving said he was not comfortable with the “optics” of declaring an emergency before the protests, and Senate gun sergeant Michael Stenger went recommend to Sund that you informally ask the guard to be ready for last Wednesday.
“We knew it would be bigger,” Sund told the Post. “We looked at intelligence. We knew we would have large crowds, the potential for some violent altercations. I had nothing to indicate that we would have a large crowd that would take over the Capitol. “
The outgoing chief said his request before the riots ended up being the first of six times his calls for assistance would be denied or postponed. When the pro-Trump crowd arrived at the Capitol around 12:40 p.m., it took about 15 minutes to break the perimeter on the west side, he said.
“If we had had the National Guard, we could have kept them further away until more officers arrived from our partner agencies,” he said.
Sund said around 2:26 p.m. he asked the Pentagon to provide backup in a conference call. But a senior army official said he could not recommend the army secretary Ryan McCarthyRyan McCarthy Night Defense: Pentagon Chief Condemns Capitol Riots | The Speaker of the House calls for the removal of Trump Fence erected around the Capitol | Democratic Senator, Air Force veteran, assassinates a security concern over the inauguration, the DC Guard to erect a 7-foot “non-scalable fence” around the Capitol after violent riots MORE authorize the deployment, saying, “I don’t like the National Guard’s image of a police line with the Capitol in the background,” the Post reported, citing call participants.
The first National Guard personnel ended up arriving at 5:40 p.m., after four of the five deaths had already occurred amid the riots.
The Post was unable to reach Irving for comment and Stenger declined to comment, telling a reporter, “I really don’t want to talk about it.” Both officials have resigned following the riots amid pressure from lawmakers.
Pentagon officials have noted the fact that Capitol police did not call on the DC National Guard before the protest or call for a riot contingency plan involving the Guard.
“We rely on Capitol police and federal law enforcement to provide an assessment of the situation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said last week, according to the newspaper. “And, according to this assessment, they believed they had enough staff and made no request.”
But Sund warns that “if they fail to act together with physical security, it will happen again,” potentially to the president-elect Joe Biden
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