Members of Congress have been running over to praise the capitol police bravery since the Jan. 6 attack.
But behind the scenes, the Capitol Police has voted for a vote of no confidence in its administration. Both Democrats and Republicans praised officials for the quick thinking that saved several members of Congress and then Vice President Mike Pence from the troublemakers, but officials are furious precisely because they were forced to improvise after their managers did not plan the attack.
BuzzFeed News has been talking to Black Capitol police officers after the attack on the Capitol. They want more than just to be called heroes. They want the leadership of the Capitol Police and Congress, which directly oversees the department, to radically change their culture, which they said has directly led to the catastrophic failure to prepare for the Capitol riot. Officials said they believed the first step in reforming the agency would be to introduce transparency and accountability. As part of the Legislative Branch, the agency is not subject to Freedom of Information requests. The little that was known about the department before January 6 came largely from lawsuits alleging discrimination by women and minority officials against the agency.
Officials are issuing their censorship ballots over a 24-hour period that began at 3 pm on Thursday. The ballot asks officers to vote for six chiefs, who together represent almost the entire high command of the department. Voting is not mandatory and cannot, on its own, remove senior officials. But for a veteran officer, the vote is the key to moving the conversation from what he described as “political theater” to real responsibility that would force department leadership and Congress to address officials’ concerns.
On Thursday morning, just before the suspicious vote began, Mayor Nancy Pelosi announced that officers on duty on the day of the attack would receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor granted by the Congress.
For a veteran officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed News last month and whose story was highlighted by Rep. Jamie Raskin in the Democrats’ opening statement during the impeachment hearing, the news that he and his colleagues were receiving the Congressional Gold Medal was “like an adrenaline shot in the arm” after a week-long emotional roller coaster.
On the other hand, the medal seemed like a distraction from officials’ efforts to use the vote of no confidence to call for substantive change within the department.
“We are paid to do a job. We don’t want or need a lot of recognition, ”said the veteran with almost two decades in the force. “If they wanted to show their appreciation, there are a myriad of other ways to do that.”
Police are still dealing with the physical and emotional consequences of the attack, which resulted in the death of a colleague, Brian Sicknick, in the line of duty.
“Everyone would trade that for Sicknick back, as well as everyone who is out with his various injuries. Political theater is part of the game; it looks disgusting and insincere, ”he said.
The officer also said he felt conflicted during the memorial service for Officer Sicknick last week. “We were being used as props. They put us in the square and are taking pictures and everything, ”he said. “I have nothing but respect for him and I just want to honor his memory, but it just didn’t go well for me or for many officers I spoke with.”
“We had a lot of metals that were in the front and in the center, but where were you on the 6th?” he said. “Where were you when people needed you to make decisions?”
In the vote this week are Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman, Assistant Chief Chad Thomas, Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher, Deputy Chief Jeffrey Pickett, Deputy Chief Eric Waldow and Deputy Chief Timothy Bowen. In a memo for grassroots officers, the union’s board explained why they were targeting these bosses: “We cannot start addressing the Department’s systemic failures without new leadership,” said the memo. “We have leaders in this Department. Leaders we trust and who will work with the union to make the changes we need to make. These leaders exist, but not at the level of Chief, Deputy Chief and Deputy Chief. “
The official veteran, who has been in the department for almost two decades, plans to vote “no confidence” for all six bosses in the vote this week. “Yesterday we had a boss on the call list. I’ve never seen this man in my life, ”he said. “These people sit in a glass tower, you never see them, and now that has happened, we cannot keep them away. It seems so insincere and shamelessly shouts of ‘I’m just trying to protect myself from whatever is going on.’ “
The officers who spoke to BuzzFeed News were divided over who needed to go.
An official said he supported the new interim chief, Yogananda Pittman, but would be voting “without confidence” for three chiefs he said were “nowhere” on Jan. 6. But he is not confident that even removing these chiefs would be enough to change a culture in which he said they are treated as glorified TSA agents by members of Congress who get angry at them even doing basic police work, often requiring police officers to guide them and their visitors through security checkpoints. For culture to change, he said, members of Congress would have to start respecting officials.
Another officer, who has been in the department for about a decade, said the only thing he knew for sure was that he would cast a vote of no confidence in one of the deputy chiefs, whom the officer also said he had not heard of or see on 6 June. January.
“He’s been a boss for years and nobody knows who he is; he never spoke to anyone, ”he said of Thomas. “If he weren’t in uniform, no one would know who he was.”
In a memo sent to grassroots officers on the eve of the vote, acting chief Yogananda Pittman said she understood the officers’ “anger and frustration”. And she added that, although the vote was not binding, “it speaks to the sentiment and concerns of some of our directors.”
In response to questions from BuzzFeed News, a department spokesman pointed to the boss’s statement.
But for some of the officers, Pittman’s words sounded empty. Before being promoted to interim chief after the departure of former chief Steven Sund, who was forced to resign because of the department’s uncertain response to the insurrection, Pittman was the head of his intelligence operation.
In a closed-door meeting with the House Appropriations Committee in late January, Pittman admitted that his department had not adequately prepared itself for the attack on the Capitol.
“On January 4, the Department knew that the January 6 event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020,” says Pittman’s testimony. “We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be present. We also knew that some of these participants intended to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target. “
For a veteran officer of almost two decades, this admission alone should result in the removal of all managers. “They had information and refused to disclose it and put the lives of countless policemen at risk … That’s what the chief admitted to the commission.”
In his note to officials this week, Pittman promised that they would receive the tools and resources they need to prevent another failure like January 6. But for the veteran officer who is planning to vote against all six bosses, more training and resources are not the problem.
“They’re just going to spend a lot of money on some things and we’re going to do a lot of training and they’re going to hire some outside agency to give us this new tool or whatever the hottest training of the year and they’re going to charge the department an exorbitant amount money to do that, ”said the official.
For this officer, the only way to move the department forward is to dispose of its current leadership.
“I don’t think it’s a panacea,” he said, but “there’s no way to move on with the people who were in charge when [the attack] It happened.”
He said that he and his colleagues are struggling to move forward. He himself didn’t realize how angry he was until last weekend, when he saw his mother for the first time and they started talking about what happened on January 6. He said he could see the pain and horror on her face.
“It just hit me in a whole new way. I am usually a very positive and cheerful person, but since that day I have been furious, ”he said. “It is not a good situation to be at work and not to trust people who are making decisions that can determine whether I go home or whether my co-workers go home.”
“It’s a terrible place to work right now, and that’s not what you want to have with people who carry guns to live.”