Statistics: Posted by CDFingers — Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:25 pm
Yet congressional leaders need not look far for accountability. Congress itself is both client and overseer of the U.S Capitol Police — a secretive agency whose procedures and actions have been kept under wraps for decades by lawmakers themselves.
“The Capitol Police is uniquely opaque, even among federal law enforcement,” said Jonathan M. Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
A high-ranking law enforcement official — not authorized to speak publicly to the press — said the agency’s missteps were “a failure of planning, not intelligence.”
A Capitol Police union representative faulted those at the top, including Police Chief Steve Sund, saying poor communication was part of a larger pattern of mismanagement that endangered officers. The pandemic may have also played a role, but it’s unknown how many officers were suffering from COVID-19 or under quarantine at the time.
Little is known about how the Capitol Police operate, despite their ubiquitous presence on Capitol Hill. Congress has exempted the agency from the Freedom of Information Act, preventing the public from requesting records — unlike with other agencies, such as the FBI. The force has its own inspector general, but the office does not make public its investigations or reports.
Inspector General Michael Bolton told Congress in 2019 that “protecting and securing the Capitol complex from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction while at the same time protecting Congress and its staff and welcoming the public continues to be a major challenge.”
His office made a series of recommendations to the Capitol Police, including boosting counter-surveillance and securing entry points. Bolton and his staff did not respond to requests for comment.
In an email, Anna Hansen of the House Committee on Appropriations — one of four congressional panels tasked with overseeing the Capitol Police — noted that a measure adopted before Wednesday’s events will kick in later this year and require Bolton’s office to review the last three years of its work to see which of reports “could” be made publicly available without compromising safety. However, the new policy stops short of actually making those reports public.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), who chairs the Committee on House Administration, declined to comment on her committee’s oversight role of the Capitol Police, including transparency measures long proposed by open-government advocates.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... cy-effortsA review of arrest data by Demand Progress — a nonprofit that has pushed the Capitol Police for greater transparency — found that a bulk of arrests typically occurs outside of Congressional working hours and outside the Capitol. The force has an agreement with the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department that extends its jurisdiction past the Capitol and its grounds and into surrounding neighborhoods. “They’re spending time knocking over people for smoking pot or people being homeless at Union Station,” Demand Progress Director Daniel Schuman said. It’s unclear why the agency is conducting low-level arrests that don’t appear to have a direct link to its primary duty, he said.
With a budget of $515 million the Capitol Police would easily dwarf most municipal police departments. By comparison, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department was funded at $559 million with almost twice the officers.
Although national conversations about policing have spurred the adoption of greater transparency measures such as body cameras, Schuman said, the Capitol Police have resisted basic practices like reporting arrest information — something the agency began doing in a limited format only in December 2018. Schuman also noted that attempts to pinpoint what went wrong on Wednesday are difficult because the agency’s standard operating procedures are also kept secret. “This is an insular system where it’s all about protecting the members,” Schuman said. “It takes a giant scandal like overrunning the Capitol before members start to rethink that relationship.”
Statistics: Posted by highdesert — Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:17 pm
The rioting and loss of control has raised serious questions over security at the Capitol for future events. The actions of the day also raise troubling concerns about the treatment of mainly white Trump supporters, who were allowed to roam through the building for hours, while Black and brown protesters who demonstrated last year over police brutality faced more robust and aggressive policing.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that as the rioting was underway, it became clear that the Capitol Police were overrun. But he said there was no contingency planning done in advance for what forces could do in case of a problem at the Capitol because Defense Department help was turned down. “They’ve got to ask us, the request has to come to us,” said McCarthy.
It is not clear how many officers were on-duty Wednesday, but the complex is policed by a total of 2,300 officers for 16 acres of ground who protect the 435 House representatives, 100 U.S. senators and their staff. By comparison, the city of Minneapolis has about 840 uniformed officers policing a population of 425,000 in a 6,000-acre area.
There were signs for weeks that violence could strike on Jan. 6, when Congress convened for a joint session to finish counting the Electoral College votes that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden had won the presidential election.
Sund, the Capitol Police chief, said he had expected a display of “First Amendment activities” that instead turned into a “violent attack.” But Gus Papathanasiou, head of the Capitol Police union, said planning failures left officers exposed without backup or equipment against surging crowds of rioters. “We were lucky that more of those who breached the Capitol did not have firearms or explosives and did not have a more malign intent,” Papathanasiou said in a statement. “Tragic as the deaths are that resulted from the attack, we are fortunate the casualty toll was not higher.”
The Justice Department, FBI and other agencies began to monitor hotels, flights and social media for weeks and were expecting large crowds. Mayor Muriel Bowser had warned of impending violence for weeks, and businesses had closed in anticipation. She requested National Guard help from the Pentagon on Dec. 31, but the Capitol Police turned down the Jan. 3 offer from the Defense Department, according to Kenneth Rapuano, assistant defense secretary for homeland security. “We asked more than once and the final return that we got on Sunday the 3rd was that they would not be asking DOD for assistance,” he said.
The Justice Department’s offer for FBI support as the protesters grew violent was rejected by the Capitol Police, according to the two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
By then, it was too late.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department descended. Agents from nearly every Justice Department agency, including the FBI, were called in. So was the Secret Service and the Federal Protective Service. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent two tactical teams. Police from as far away as New Jersey arrived to help.
It took four hours to evict the protesters from the Capitol complex. By then, they had roamed the halls of Congress, posed for photos inside hallowed chambers, broken through doors, destroyed property and taken photos of themselves doing it. Only 13 were arrested at the time; scores were arrested later.
Statistics: Posted by highdesert — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:55 pm
He sees the entire Democratic response as a conspiracy/ We call it an election, but then any road block he can not buy or intimidate or just grind down he sees as a conspiracy. Otherwise, he would have to admit defeat.No, Trump sees it as more proof of conspiracy against him.
Statistics: Posted by TrueTexan — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:51 pm
Statistics: Posted by DougB1946 — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:43 pm
Statistics: Posted by sig230 — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:29 pm
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. raises his fist toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the Capitol on Jan. 6,
The largest newspapers in his home state called on him to resign. His publisher canceled its contract with him for an upcoming book. He's been pilloried by both Democrats and Republicans for leading the futile objection effort.
And a viral photo of Hawley entering the Capitol before the riot, showing the senator in a slim-fitting suit, hair perfectly coiffed and raising his fist toward the gathered crowd, has already become a lasting image of a day that won't soon be forgotten.
"It was like a Dukakis-on-the-tank moment," one Republican strategist told NBC News in reference to a famous attack ad on the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, "in that he just looked phony and out of place and like a doofus." At 41, Hawley is the youngest sitting senator and is thought of as a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate. Since his election to the Senate in 2018, he's carved out a space for himself as the leading Republican critic of the tech giants — a policy area that had generated him a substantial following and coverage in the press. That's now been overshadowed by his objection effort.
Following the riot, Hawley condemned the violence at the Capitol and said he was simply objecting to the electors to give voice to his constituents in Missouri, a state that went to Trump by 15 points in 2020.
Before any violence took place at the Capitol, Hawley was under fire from colleagues, whether it'd be the likes of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who told MSNBC last week she believed his effort "borders on sedition or treason" or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah., who said the objections were simply an act to "enhance the political ambitions of some," alluding to possible 2024 presidential aspirations.
Hawley "is talking about Pennsylvania because he wants to come here & run for President some day," Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., tweeted. "The lies he told inspired today's violence. He is still telling those lies. Pennsylvania will never forget."
Rick Tyler, who was communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz's 2016 campaign (the Texas senator led his own objection to the electoral results), said the criticism coming Hawley's way is "well deserved."
"Members of Congress do have a right to challenge electors but doing so must be carefully weighed against substantial evidence of malfeasance," Tyler said. "In Sen. Hawley's case, no such evidence existed to suggest the electors were not legitimate. It is not good enough to say you are representing the voters who believe the election was rigged when that assertion was based on lies and conspiracies that were thoroughly disproven by election officials, recounts, court cases and absence of credible evidence."
"Sen. Hawley’s job was to represent the truth," he added. "Instead, he chose to go along with the president and others, namely Senator Cruz, to incite an insurrection."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... l-n1253470Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life," former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., and a mentor to the senator, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday. "It is very dangerous to America to continue pushing this idea that government doesn't work and that voting was fraudulent."
Soon after that remark, Simon & Schuster, which was set to publish his upcoming book "The Tyranny of Big Tech," announced it was canceling its contract with Hawley, pointing to the "deadly insurrection."
Statistics: Posted by highdesert — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:21 pm
Statistics: Posted by Ylatkit — Sat Jan 09, 2021 2:11 pm