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Several Officers Suspended Following Capitol Breach, USCP Chief Confirms
BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN January 11, 2021 Updated: January 12, 2021biggersmaller Print
Several Capitol Police officers have been suspended following the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building, Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman announced in a statement late Monday.
United States Capitol Police’s (USCP) Pittman confirmed that the department has suspended several USCP officers following a review of video and other open source materials.
The department is actively reviewing footage of further officers and officials that appear to be in violation of its regulations and policies, said Pittman, who was appointed as USCP acting police chief after the former head resigned in the aftermath of last week’s breach.
“Several USCP officers have already been suspended pending the outcome of their investigations,” she wrote. “The investigation of the January 6 riot is continuing in collaboration with numerous law enforcement agencies and the USCP, along with its law enforcement partners, are aggressively working to identify and arrest those involved in the destruction of property at the U.S. Capitol Complex.”
“It is our intention to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Earlier, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, announced during a virtual press briefing that two Capitol police officers had been suspended after the Capitol breach.
He told reporters that USCP is cracking down on all individuals involved “that potentially facilitated, on a big level or small level in any way,” in the assault on Capitol grounds that took place during Wednesday’s joint session of Congress that saw lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence counting electoral votes.
One of the officers suspended by Capitol Police was caught on camera taking a selfie with a rioter. The second suspended officer was reportedly seen wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat and was seen directing people around, he said.
He didn’t further elaborate on details of the individuals arrested.
Ryan also stated that he wasn’t aware of any evidence of specific lawmakers being targeted other than what could be heard from individuals shouting the name of the vice president and the speaker during the breach.
Between 10 to 15 investigations are currently underway for officer misconduct during the incident, Ryan confirmed.
“They’re trying to crack down on … that because again, we need all hands on deck moving forward. We can’t have somebody protecting on the inauguration that was not doing the job during the Jan. 6 event,” Ryan said.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called on the Department of Homeland Security to increase security measures ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. She has also urged Americans to avoid the city during the inauguration.
The National Guard confirmed Monday that up to 15,000 troops will be authorized to be deployed around the nation’s capital ahead of inauguration day.
“Right now, we have approximately 6,200 National Guard Soldiers and Airmen from 6 states and the District of Columbia on the ground in the NCR [National Capital Region] supporting civilian authorities,” Gen. Daniel Hokanson said in a statement.
Some critics have said President Donald Trump, during a lunchtime Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol, incited violence—despite the president saying that the protesters should protest “peacefully and patriotically.”
Following the outbreak of violence, Trump took to Twitter to call on protester to “go home in peace” He denounced the violence as a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy” on Jan. 7.
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Outgoing Chief of Capitol Police Says Efforts to Summon National Guard Were Thwarted: Report
BY TOM OZIMEK January 11, 2021 Updated: January 12, 2021biggersmaller Print
Steven Sund, outgoing chief of the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP), says House and Senate security officials rejected or slow-walked multiple requests by the agency to call in the National Guard for assistance on Jan. 6.
Sund told The Washington Post in an interview published on Jan. 10 that, in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 incident in which protesters and rioters breached the Capitol building and committed acts of violence, he had asked House and Senate security officials to let him request that the D.C. National Guard be put on standby.
He told the outlet that the officials denied or postponed his requests six times.
House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving said he wasn’t comfortable with how a declaration of an emergency would be received ahead of the protests, said Sund, who resigned following the Capitol breach.
“We knew it would be bigger,” Sund told The Washington Post. “We looked at the intelligence. We knew we would have large crowds, the potential for some violent altercations. I had nothing indicating we would have a large mob seize the Capitol.”
Epoch Times Photo
Protesters storm the Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Ahmed Gaber/Reuters)
According to Sund, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger recommended that Sund make an informal request to the National Guard to be put on standby.
The Washington Post couldn’t reach Irving for comment, while Stenger declined to comment. Both officials have resigned following the incident, in which five people died, including a woman shot to death inside the Capitol building and a USCP officer who was beaten and died of his injuries.
“If we would have had the National Guard, we could have held them at bay longer, until more officers from our partner agencies could arrive,” Sund told The Washington Post.
Epoch Times Photo
Workers clean up the debris and damage caused by protesters at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 7, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Pentagon officials have said USCP didn’t ask the National Guard to deploy ahead of the protest, nor ask for a riot contingency plan involving guardsmen.
“We rely on Capitol Police and federal law enforcement to provide an assessment of the situation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said last week, according to The Washington Post. “And based on that assessment that they had, they believed they had sufficient personnel and did not make a request.”
According to a Department of Defense (DoD) planning and execution timeline for the National Guard’s involvement in the Jan. 6 incident (pdf), the Pentagon checked in with USCP on both Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 and confirmed that Capitol Police made no requests nor indicated a requirement for DoD support at the Capitol protest.
Thousands of protesters followed President Donald Trump to gather around the Capitol on Jan. 6 after his speech outside the White House, during which he asked protesters to “peaceful and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Some people breached the Capitol building, however, and what followed were numerous acts of lawlessness and violence. It’s unclear who instigated the incursion.
Epoch Times Photo
Protesters stand on the veranda of the U.S. Capitol at a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Brandon Drey)
“These individuals actively attacked United States Capitol Police Officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and took up other weapons against our officers,” Sund said in a Jan. 7 statement. “They were determined to enter into the Capitol building by causing great damage.”
At around 1:49 p.m. on Jan. 6, Sund spoke by phone with several Pentagon officials, asking for immediate assistance, the DoD timeline shows. Then, at around 2:22 p.m., a phone call took place involving D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and other city officials, along with D.C. Metro Police Department (MPD) officials, requesting additional National Guard support. At 2:30 p.m. senior Pentagon officials met to discuss both requests, and at 3 p.m. determined that all available National Guard forces were required to reinforce MPD and USCP at the Capitol. The first National Guard personnel arrived at 5:40 p.m. and deployed on the scene.
Following a series of actions by USCP, MPD, and the National Guard, the Capitol building was declared secured at 8 p.m., according to the timeline.
So far, at least 90 people have been arrested on charges ranging from misdemeanor curfew violations to felonies related to assaults on police officers, possessing illegal weapons, and making death threats against lawmakers.
Law enforcement officials have opened at least 25 domestic terrorism cases related to the breach.
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Lax Security at Capitol on Jan. 6 ‘Unbelievable,’ War and Protest Correspondent Says
BY SAMUEL ALLEGRI AND JAN JEKIELEK January 10, 2021 Updated: January 11, 2021biggersmaller Print
The lax security at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was unbelievable, according to war and protest correspondent and writer Michael Yon.
Yon, a former member of U.S. special forces who was at the Capitol protests himself, said that in the areas he was in near the Capitol, there was no real security on Jan. 6.
“There was no real security at all, really. It was like a straight shot, like Atlanta airport, with lights telling you where to land,” Yon said. “It was a clear shot to the Capitol. Where was the security on a day like this? It was unbelievable.”
Yon said that lack of security looked like an invitation to proceed to storm the Capitol.
“They had taken down the barriers, which were nothing, they were like the snow fence—you know, the plastic ones that you can unfurl—so those were nothing. I mean, literally, a child can take them down,” he said.
He said he believes the storming of the Capitol was influenced by some typical crowd control methods, though he didn’t say if the tactics were intentionally used or not.
He recounted that some people started the walk toward the Capitol building before President Donald Trump had concluded his speech.
At that point, Yon decided to take an Uber to a location 400 meters away from the Capitol.
As soon as he got out of the ride, “one guy’s already gassed. And he’s, you know, he said that he had just been tear-gassed.” He added that, according to a photo from earlier, somebody had been shot in the cheek “maybe with a pepper ball.”
“But then I saw people directing traffic,” he recounted. “‘Follow me, we’re going this way, we’re going to take our house back,’ that sort of thing.”
Yon saw a lot of people, some with megaphones, encouraging the crowds to move forward. He said that some of these people directing traffic were likely to have been agent provocateurs, explaining that it’s an old technique.
“Basically, you can take somebody else’s crowd and make it do what you want it to do. Or you can take your own crowd and make it do what you want it to do,” he explained.
A small contingent of rioters and protesters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6—the same day Congress was counting the electoral votes and confirming former Vice President Joe Biden as the president-elect—while tens of thousands of Trump supporters were gathering in Washington to call for election integrity.
Trump had asked supporters gathered adjacent to the White House for his speech to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” at the planned gathering at the Capitol.
But a subgroup of protesters eventually breached the building and vandalized the iconic structure, causing outrage from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporters who decided to enter the building, was killed during a scuffle with a plainclothes U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officer as she was tried to enter the House chamber via a broken window.
In another confrontation, USCP officer Brian Sicknick died from injuries he sustained while engaging with protesters.
Yon also said he believes that some of the protesters were likely members of the anarcho-communist group “Antifa” or a related group. He was able to spot some signs on some people’s helmets such as “ACAB,” which stands for “all cops are [expletive]”—a sign intrinsically related to Antifa but not to supporters of Trump, who are usually strong advocates for law enforcement.
The Epoch Times cannot verify the allegations independently.
Journalist Andy Ngo, an expert on Antifa, has expressed doubts that the group was behind the Capitol Hill protests.
“The people occupying the Capitol building do not look like Antifa people dressed in Trump gear or Trump costumes,” he told The Washington Examiner. “I have seen no evidence that they are able to coordinate a mass infiltration on this scale before, so I’m really skeptical that they would have been able to do it here without any of that information leaking out.”
Yon said it was “very sad that we’ve come to this” and noted that tensions in America are high.
“Hopefully, the United States will calm down soon,” he said. “Do I think that’ll happen? I don’t feel like it.”
Allen Zhong contributed to the report.
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