Capitol Police chief apologizes for security failures during the assault
Source: New York Times
(The acting Capitol Police chief, Yogananda D. Pittman, told a House panel that the agency “failed to meet its own high standards as well as yours.”Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
The acting chief of the Capitol Police apologized to Congress on Tuesday for the agency’s massive security failures on Jan. 6, acknowledging during a closed-door briefing that the department knew there was a “strong potential for violence” but failed to take adequate steps to prevent what she described as a “terrorist attack.”
Yogananda D. Pittman, the acting chief of police, also confirmed that the Capitol Police Board, an obscure panel made up of three voting members, had initially declined a request two days earlier for National Guard troops and then delayed for more than an hour as the violence unfolded on Jan. 6 before finally agreeing to a plea from the Capitol Police for National Guard troops, according to prepared testimony obtained by The New York Times.
In an extraordinary admission, Ms. Pittman, who was not the acting chief at the time of the siege, told members of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees funding for the agency, that the Capitol Police “failed to meet its own high standards as well as yours.” She added, “I am here to offer my sincerest apologies on behalf of the department.” Her comments offered the fullest detailed account to date about police preparations on Jan. 6 in which thousands of angry protesters, believing false claims that the election had been stolen, marched on the Capitol at the behest of former President Donald J. Trump.
Speaking by video conference in a virtual briefing, Ms. Pittman told the subcommittee that the department “should have been more prepared for this attack,” according to the remarks. Ms. Pittman said that her department knew Jan. 6 would be unlike previous protests. She said her department knew that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would descend on Washington, D.C. “We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event,” she said. “We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target. The Department prepared in order to meet these challenges, but we did not do enough.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/politics/capitol-police-national-guard.html
Full headline: Capitol Police chief apologizes for security failures during the assault, including a delay in calling for Guard troops.
Hearings are underway!
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