USA TODAY International Edition
Our View: Investigate colossal security failure at the Capitol
The great security failures of American history have been mercifully rare. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 certainly was one, as were the hijacked jetliners flown into buildings in New York and Washington, D. C., in 2001.
The sacking of the U. S. Capitol on Wednesday — deadly, though far less so than those surprise strikes from foreign enemies — can now be added to this list. At the center of government for the world’s most powerful country, thousands of pro- Trump rioters in sweats and MAGA hats simply walked up the hill, broke into the building and desecrated a place of national pride.
A Capitol Police officer was among the five who died amid the chaos. Given the breakdown in security and the threats of violence against senior government leaders, the carnage could have been far worse.
How could this possibly have happened? Police and federal authorities surely had plenty of warning.
President Donald Trump had been lying for weeks about being cheated out of a second term. Thousands of his most rabid followers were in high dudgeon, and Jan. 6 was the day Congress would affirm Joe Biden’s election to the presidency. Trump exhorted people to demonstrate: “Will be wild!”
Far- right social media sites filled with vitriol: calls for using violence against members of Congress and occupying the Capitol; guides for sneaking guns into the city; routes to avoid police; and the best tools for breaking and entering.
Authorities should have been prepared. But police had been rightly criticized during the summer for using heavy- handed tactics against largely peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators. So authorities said they wanted a toned- down response to avoid similar imagery and criticism.
“There is no need to present an impression of anticipating violence,” one official told The Washington Post.
Except that violence was exactly what they should have anticipated.
U. S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund — whose more than 2,000 officers were easily brushed aide by rioters who clambered into the building, penetrating the House and Senate chambers — turned down National Guard support days before the protests, and he inexplicably rejected additional manpower from the FBI even as extremists were climbing Capitol Hill.
Sund said he had developed a “robust” plan for peaceful demonstrations, not what he got.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for his resignation, and the chief is stepping down this week.
That’s appropriate, but other hard questions remain. Why weren’t city police, whose job was to secure grounds outside the Capitol, available sooner and in larger numbers? Where was the National Guard, which in Washington has to be approved by the Pentagon and wasn’t visible until long after violence broke out?
And why the obvious double standard when the crowd corralled is predominantly white, not Black? Wednesday evening, police used careful — even gentle — pressure to clear the last defiant agitators from the Capitol grounds, a stark contrast with how they dealt with largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
While individuals Capitol Police officers acted heroically, it was a disgraceful law enforcement response overall. With the approaching presidential inauguration and the continued risk for further extremist violence, authorities need to quickly identify and close the security gaps.
And they need to use the volumes of videos produced during the event to continue tracking down violators and charging them with any of more than a dozen federal crimes, ranging from rebellion and insurrection to riotous acts to damaging or destroying federal property.
The rioters who defiled the Capitol must be held accountable, along with those who incited them to violent insurrection aimed at overturning the will of American voters and blocking Biden’s election as president.
Beyond that, a national commission should be appointed to fully investigate what went wrong in defending this center of democracy — and how to ensure it will never happen again.