Capitol Police

[fabrisse]

I live in the District. While protesting for DC Statehood, I was arrested by the Capitol Police. This gives me -- and my research as part of my ANC duties -- some insight into what happened on Wednesday.

The first thing everyone needs to understand is that DC police (MPD for Metropolitan Police Department) has no jurisdiction on Federal land. None. Without a specific invitation, MPD can do nothing on the National Mall, Lafayette Square, White House grounds, or the Capitol grounds. DC has no options in this. MPD can only set foot on capitol grounds with an express invitation from the Capitol Police or from the legislators themselves.

This is why several national news outlets mentioned FBI police, ATF, and other agency police at the Capitol building, but not MPD. Federal police, whichever agency they belong to, can help without an express invitation. The Capitol Police work more closely with the Park Rangers on the National Mall than they do with most DC based law enforcement.

It's also why you saw MPD maintaining the exterior cordon in the late afternoon and early evening after their help had been requested.

Next, Capitol Police is a very small group (I'd be surprised if there were more than 200 total, probably closer to 100) -- apparently, per comments below, the size is closer to 1500+. I know their shifts aren't huge unless something major is expected. Their very clean and pleasant station has two cells and probably isn't any larger than 2000 square feet, about 2.5 times the size of my apartment. Capitol Police are trained to be patient with protesters and answer questions from tourists. Even though they have clubs and riot gear, they don't often need to use them. They were not part of the line at Lafayette Park when tear gas was used, for instance.

Lastly, only the mayor can call in the DC National Guard. Mayor Bowser offered the Capitol Police the DC National Guard early in the afternoon. Not knowing what was going to happen, the Capitol Police turned her down. She did put the National Guard on alert so, when Capitol Police or legislators asked for them [eta: Mike Pence personally called them in], they were ready to go relatively quickly.

For major protests, which this wasn't expected to be, advance planning, usually including MPD, is performed. I'm certain there was already a plan for all the various polices to work together for the inauguration, as an example.

Should this have been handled better? Absolutely. But this debacle doesn't rest entirely on the Capitol Police; it rests on the inspiration to sedition from the president and on the legislators and others who abetted him.

Comments

[temve]

Thank you for this insight - that helps me get more of a perspective of what happened and where the disconnects and fuck-ups were. Still can't wait for the President to stop being President!

[fabrisse]

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd love to be able to refer to President Pence for about 10 days.

[temve]

He would not have enough time to send me to a conversion camp so I'd cautiously agree.

[fabrisse]

I thought he was the old school "there's no such things as lesbians." Yeah, longer than 10 days would be too much President Pence.

[siderea]

That just means he's invested in convincing people they're mistaken/crazy for thinking themselves lesbians, q.v. trans people.

[lightbird]

Here from thisfinecrew. Thank you very much for providing this clarification.

[alexseanchai]

+1

[harpers_child]

+1

[jjhunter]

+1

[sea_changed]

As someone who isn’t from DC, this is a really useful perspective to get. Though it appears that this was expected to be a major protest—both the National Guard and the FBI offered help to the Capitol Police, who turned it down. (Source) So I remain somewhat baffled by the CP’s choices.

[siderea]

Who is at the top of the CP's chain of command? Is it Trump? Were they told not to accept help?

[duskpeterson]

The Capitol Police is controlled by Congress. The three top CP officials have already resigned, having been requested to by Congress's leaders.

[siderea]

Ah, thanks!

[duskpeterson]

The top officers of the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police have been denying they had any idea there would be violence at the protests. As various commentators have been pointing out, this is absolutely absurd. The plans for violence were posted on the Internet in public forums. Moreover, one of the top Capitol Police officers was directly warned by a congress member:

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/maxine-waters-interview-donald-trump/

The Capitol Police union has bitterly accused their leadership of failure and has asked for heads to roll.

[sea_changed]

Yeah, it seems very clear that the CP was well warned, and if they weren’t well-warned it was because they deliberately had their heads in the sand. And they refused help even as the mob descended (source in link above), so “they were unprepared” clearly isn’t what was going on here.

[duskpeterson]

Thanks for all the links! I'm off the web at the moment (I'm replying by email) but will read them with interest later.

[fabrisse]

I wasn't trying to say there were no failures in leadership. Clearly there were and they were manifold, but I got tired of hearing news anchors conflating MPD with Capitol Police -- in that they were blaming MPD for not helping -- when the Federal vs District lands and jurisdictions is such a huge thing.

[duskpeterson]

To untangle a misunderstanding: The comment by me that you're replying to here wasn't aimed at the post you'd made. Rather, I was replying to the comment by sea_changed, who had expressed confusion as to the motives of the Capitol Police for making the decisions they did. DW doesn't indent subthreads very well, so I should have clear who I was addressing. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Regarding the distinction you made in your post between the CP and the MPD, I'm in perfect agreement. I had to point out that distinction to someone else at DW. Law enforcement in DC is quite confusing, so I was glad to see you helping to sort out the confusion.

[fabrisse]

Understood. I wrote this as a somewhat hurried response to the conflation of MPD and CP that I was hearing on TV.

[fabrisse]

I did see FBI police at the scene on tv, but heaven knows when they joined in.

[siderea]

Great clarification, thanks!

ETA: I would like to either quote entire or link to here. Would one of those be acceptable to you, and if so which would you prefer?

[fabrisse]

Either or both is fine. *waves*

[duskpeterson]

Thank you for all this helpful insight! It was especially interesting to hear about the Capitol Police's cells.

Just a couple of things:

I believe that the Capitol Police may be somewhat larger than you say; their total force (officers and civilians) is 2,300, according to their website. The Washington Post describes their police force as "city-sized."

I'm also under the impression, from what I've been reading in the Post and elsewhere, that the mayor does *not* have control over the DC National Guard, since DC isn't a state.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_National_Guard

Officially, the US President controls the DC National Guard, but he delegates that duty to the Department of Defense. Not surprisingly, Mayor Bowser finds this situation (President Trump having control over the city's troops) to be highly alarming and has been using the latest attack as an opportunity to press once more for DC statehood. Which you folks totally deserve. :)

Dusk (a Marylander who grew up outside DC)

[sea_changed]

And not only does the Capitol Police force number over 2000, it has a budget of $515 million, which is only slightly smaller than DC’s regular (Metropolitan) Police budget, and is in fact significantly larger than the police budgets for entire large cities (Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis...etc.) (see here).

And the DC mayor definitely does not control the DC National Guard—all the news channels/reporter liveblogs Wednesday afternoon made a point of noting that, since there was such a delay after Mayor Bowser requested the National Guard as it was run up the Department of Defense chain of command.

[duskpeterson]

Just as bad, it took the Department of Defense ninety minutes to approve repeated offers from the State of Maryland to send our National Guard to DC. (Our governor was responding to phone pleas from the House Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, who were in hiding at that point.)

Is this how long the Department of Defense normally takes when dealing with national emergencies? I seem to recall they were quicker in 9/11, and even then they faced criticism for being too slow.

[ilyena_sylph]

This is a super interesting post, thank you!

Wiki and news sources say the Capitol Police have +2,200 staff, though?

[fabrisse]

Updated thank you.

[impala_chick]

I was aware of the jurisdictional issues for the DC Police, but I did not understand that capital police are different. The videos that show the officers being overwhelmed outside the capitol steps look like mostly capitol police? Seemed like they didn't have firearms, just clubs.

[fabrisse]

Yes and the ones that looked like they just stepped aside (very few, thank heavens) were Capitol Police.

[jazzyjj]

Thanks a million for posting this. I had no idea this was the case. What happened on Wednesday was a total disgrace. My brother lives not far from DC, and I'm curious to get his take on this whole thing. I've been closely monitoring things on CNN and some other media outlets, as have my parents. This also seems to have been the talk of my apartment building over the past few days. I for one, cannot wait for Joe and Kamala to take office!

[fabrisse]

I completely agree.