Bureaucratic bungling of Capital security.

CAPITAL POLICE CHIEF DENIED GUARD BACK-UP 6 TIMES BEFORE JAN.6

MOST WORRIED ABOUT A NEGATIVE VISUAL IMPRESSION

The capital police force has a contingent of 2000 officers and a $460 million budget to provide security for the 270 acre U.S. capitol. Their main back-up is the D.C. metropolitan police. Stephen Sund was the chief of police of the capital police on January 6. He and most of those under him were forced to resign by Nancy Polisi the day after the Jan. 6 incident. The capital police force is controlled by the house speaker and the senate leader through the capital police board.

In the days preceding the January 6. rally all those concerned had information that this rally was going to be exceptionally large and that there were some unruly behaviour expected. Chief Sund, asked anyone who would listen, for National guard back-up six times and was rejected every time. National guard has to be requested by the mayor of D.C. Muriel Bowser. It then has to be approved by the Pentagon.

Earlier it was reported that President Trump told Christopher Miller acting secretary of defence that he was letting them make their decisions concerning this event. He told them that a lot of people were coming and he recommended 10,000 national guard be brought in. Muriel Bowser would only approve 340 unarmed national guard.

The capital police knew they had a security problem as soon as 1:00 pm and started asking for help. There really was not much help quickly available. A reported conference call between D.C.government, capital police and the pentagon took place at 2.26 PM. The pentagon was reluctant to send in national guard as they didnt want to create a negative visual. They offered to back-up D.C. police so they could send more of their officers.

Finally, national guard was approved at 3.04 pm. It took approximately 2 more hours until they arrived on the scene. It would have been better if someone would have had complete authority to make these decisions, not just after the crisis was ongoing but beforehand. There could easily have been national guard stationed nearby in ready so they could have been deployed in minutes not hours.

Whenever you get emergency bureaucratic decisions, most freeze with fear that they will be responsible for a wrong decision. Their fear can be born out with the forced resignation by all those in leadership at the time, even when they were hindered in their job by other bureaucratic fear, when they attempted to make preparations beforehand.

We now hear calls for a 9/11 type of commission, a so called bi-partisan effort, a very unlikely proposition. You can bet it will all focus on Donald Trump, the arch enemy of the bureaucratic state.