Police officers seem to be everywhere at the Capitol. So how did rioters break in?
The Capitol police are everywhere in and around the U.S. Capitol.
They’re the highly visible officers -- and sometimes undercover officers -- who have surrounded the buildings and grounds in what appear to be bigger numbers in recent years.
Security keeps tightening. Many adjacent streets are permanently closed. Streets that are open require going through a gate and a security check to enter.
Go into one of the office buildings or the Capitol itself, and it’s hard not to see an officer.
Why a mob was able to break into the Capitol Wednesday remains unclear.
“Clearly they did not have the forces in place to deal with this. It raises the question of ‘how good was the intelligence?’” said John Farmer, former New Jersey attorney general and now director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Institute of Politics.
The United States Capitol Police force had its origins in 1800 as Congress moved from Philadelphia to Washington.
A police history says that “a lone watchman, John Golding, was hired to protect the Capitol Building. After a number of incidents occurred in 1827 that could have been prevented with sufficient security and surveillance, President John Quincy Adams asked that a regular Capitol Police force be established.”
The force was founded in 1828, when Congress expanded the police regulations of the City of Washington to include the Capitol and Capitol Square.
Today, an estimated 2,300 uniformed and civilian personnel cover the Capitol complex’s roughly two square miles. In contrast, the Metropolitan Washington D.C. police department has 3,950 sworn and civilian personnel.
The Capitol Police had a budget of $464.3 million last year and is due to get $515 million this fiscal year. It screened 11.2 million people in 2018.
The police department has been the target of some criticism, as it has provided scant public information about its operations.
Its Twitter account, activated in 2008, has never had a tweet.
The last “latest news” on its media center website was posted October 27. It announced an assistant chief was recognized as “Outstanding Advocate for Women in Federal Law Enforcement.”
It does provide weekly updates of arrests. For the week ending Wednesday it listed five incidents, including an attempt to unlawfully enter a House office building, arrest of a fugitive, an assault and two traffic violations involving driving under the influence or drug use.
At a June 2019 House Administration Committee hearing, Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton criticized what he called a lack of transparency, saying the force “provides little public information about its activities.”
It’s under no legal obligation to answer requests from the public for records through the Freedom of Information Act. It issued 15 press releases in 2019 (and nine in 2020) and its daily department news summary “has not been made available despite our requests.”
Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund said at that hearing that his department manages “an ever-increasing number of demonstrations, which are approved for specific outdoor demonstration areas and we manage responses to numerous instances of prohibited civil disturbances across the U.S. Capitol Complex.”
Wednesday’s police action, along with other security concerns, will be addressed.
“The breach today at the U.S. Capitol raises grave security concerns,” said House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., in a statement. She said she would be consulting House and Senate leaders “to address these concerns and review the response in coming days.”
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