Ex-Capitol Police Chief Says Requests For National Guard Denied 6 Times In Riots : NPR - 0 views
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The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.
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Former chief Steven Sund -- who resigned his post last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down
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Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.
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Sund told the Post that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving was concerned with the "optics" of declaring an emergency ahead of the protests and rejected a National Guard presence.
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Sund says he requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack on the Capitol. Each of those requests was denied or delayed, he says.
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During Wednesday's violence, Bowser requested, and received, a limited force of 340 from the D.C. National Guard. Those troops were unarmed and their job was to help with traffic flow — not law enforcement, which was meant to be handled by D.C. police.
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When the mob reached the Capitol complex at about 12:40 p.m. ET on Wednesday, it took about 15 minutes for the west side perimeter of the building to be breached, he says. The Capitol Police contingent, which numbered around 1,400 that day, was quickly overrun by the estimated 8,000 rioters.
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Sund says during a conference call with several law enforcement officials at about 2:26 p.m., he asked the Pentagon to provide backup.
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Senior Army official Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff, said on the call he couldn't recommend that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy authorize deployment,
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"I don't like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background,