Blame Pelosi, not top Cap cop
STEVEN SUND, the popular US Capitol Police chief fired on live television by Nancy Pelosi less than 24 hours after January’s Capitol riot, is sorely missed by his troops in their hour of need.
Morale has plummeted and officers are resigning or contemplating early retirement in the aftermath, scapegoating and despicable politicization of the Capitol riot. Two have committed suicide.
A bad situation took a turn for worse last Friday when Capitol Police Officer Billy Evans was killed and another officer injured by an Islamist Louis Farrakhan follower who rammed a car into a police barricade outside the Capitol.
It was Sund (pictured) who quietly went to visit the injured officer, Kevin Shaver, in the hospital Saturday, and Sund to whom officers turned for advice and consolation after the lone-wolf attack. They keep asking if he can return to his job.
When the remains of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died in unexplained circumstances the day after the Jan. 6 riot, were lying in honor in the Capitol rotunda, it was Sund who slipped in before dawn to pay his respects before House Speaker Pelosi staged her self-serving spectacle.
Sund, a decorated, 25-year career veteran of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, where he was commander of the Special Operations Division, had been running the Capitol Police for 18 months.
He had tried for two days to get permission for National Guard backup before the riot but was blocked by people doing the bidding of Pelosi.
Pelosi has never owned up to her role in the woeful undermanning of the Capitol Police that day. Instead, she blamed Sund and her loyal House sergeant at arms, Paul Irving.
By scapegoating Sund, who had capably led his outnumbered troops that terrible day, and kept every member of Congress safe, she was blaming the very officers who fought valiantly for hours to defend the Capitol.
“I am calling for the resignation of the chief of the Capitol Police, Mr. Sund,” Pelosi declared at a televised press conference on Jan. 7. “He hasn’t even called us since this happened.”
That just wasn’t true, as Sund told Pelosi in an eight-page letter.
He spoke to Pelosi twice on Jan. 6.
At 5:36 p.m., he briefed thenVice President Mike Pence and Pelosi that the chambers could be safely reoccupied beginning at 7:30 p.m. to complete certification of the Electoral College vote.
He had another conference call with Pelosi and Sen. Mitch McConnell an hour later.
Did the 81-year-old House speaker forget?
Earlier on the day of the riot, at 12:58 p.m., as the Capitol was being breached, Sund urgently called Irving, and again requested National Guard backup.
Irving told him he had to “run it up the chain of command.” In other words, ask Pelosi.
Sund called Irving four more times, all while commanding the battlefield.
But it took 3½ hours for Irving to tell him his request had been approved. By the time the first 150 members of the National Guard were took up positions on Capitol grounds at 5:40 p.m., the crisis was all but over.
“I do not believe that the US Capitol Police failed,” Sund wrote.
“Greatly outnumbered and against tremendous odds, they kept the members safe.”
Now the Capitol Police feel vulnerable and need serious leadership. But Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer have left them hanging.
Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman has no security of tenure and the Capitol Police Board has only just started a nationwide executive search for a permanent chief.
But the board will not find anyone more suited to the job than Sund.
While he knows his officers want him back, and friends say he would do anything to return to the job he loved, Sund would only say yesterday: “I know they’re going through a lot. I stand with them and wish I was there to support them.”
He never should have been forced out. If anyone should have resigned in disgrace, it was Nancy Pelosi.