Capitol Police slammed in stinging internal report
WASHINGTON — Shields that shattered upon impact. Weapons too old to use. Missed intelligence in which future insurrectionists warned, “We get our president or we die.”
As Congress pushes for a return to normalcy months after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a damning internal report about the deadly siege is painting a dire picture of the Capitol Police’s ability to respond to threats against lawmakers. The full report obtained by Associated Press before the department’s watchdog testifies at a House hearing casts serious doubt on whether the police would be able to respond to another large-scale attack.
The Capitol Police have so far refused to publicly release the report — prepared in March and marked as “law enforcement sensitive” — despite congressional pressure. The inspector general who prepared it, Michael Bolton, was scheduled to testify before the House Administration Committee on Thursday.
Bolton found that the department’s deficiencies were — and remain — widespread: Equipment was old and stored badly; officers didn’t complete required training; and there was a lack of direction at the Civil Disturbance Unit, which exists to ensure that legislative functions of Congress are not disrupted by civil unrest or protest activity. That was exactly what happened Jan. 6 when supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently pushed past police and broke into the Capitol as Congress counted the Electoral College votes that certified Joe Biden’s victory.
The report also focuses on several pieces of missed intelligence, including an FBI memo sent the day
before the insurrection that then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told lawmakers he never saw. The memo warned of threatening online postings by Trump backers, including one comment that Congress “needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in” and blood being spilled.
“Get violent ... Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest,” read one post recounted in the memo. “Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
A separate report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in December alerted the police to messages on a blog where people appeared to be planning for Jan. 6. One online post included a map of tunnels under the Capitol used by lawmakers and staff. “Take note,” the message said.
An extensive timeline of that day included in Bolton’s report describes the movements of the Capitol Police as officers scrambled to evacuate lawmakers. It details previously unknown conversations among officials as they disagreed on whether National Guard forces were necessary. It quotes an Army official telling Sund, after the insurrectionists had broken in, that
“we don’t like the optics of the National Guard standing in a line at the Capitol.”
Bolton found that in many cases, department equipment had expired but was not replaced. Some was more than 20 years old. Riot shields that shattered upon impact as the officers fended off the violent mob had been improperly stored. Weapons that could have fired tear gas were so old that officers didn’t feel comfortable using them.
In other cases, weapons weren’t used because of “orders from leadership,” the document says. Those weapons — called “less lethal” because they are designed to disperse rather than kill — could have helped the police repel the rioters as they moved toward the Capitol after Trump’s speech, according to the report.
The report faults the Civil Disturbance Unit for a lack of preparation.
Guidance was lacking for when to activate the unit, how to issue gear, what tactics to use and how to lay out the command structure. Some policies hadn’t been updated in more than a decade and there was no firm roster of who was even in the division.
Many officers didn’t want to be a part of that particular unit.