U.S. Capitol Police Steven Sund is stepping down amid criticism of the department’s response to protesters who invaded the Capitol in protest against President Donald Trump’s defeat in the elections.
Sund’s resignation will take effect on January 16, just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, a police spokeswoman said on Thursday. The announcement came shortly after the head of the department’s union called for a “change at the top”.
Officials are “frustrated and demoralized” at how the lack of leadership has undermined the response to the crowd, according to a statement from Gus Papathanasiou, the union president. Papathanasiou blamed failure and planning while praising officers for their work.
“We prioritize lives rather than property, bringing people to safety,” the statement said. “No member of Congress or his team was injured. Our officers did their job. Our leadership did not. Our police partners who helped us were notable.”
The statement did not call for the resignation of the head of the force, Steven Sund. Sund praised officials on Thursday, calling his actions “heroic” and criticized the chaos that emerged as “turbulent criminal behavior”.
The Capitol police response was criticized for its inability to keep protesters out of the building. Biden on Thursday criticized what he described as a double standard between how the police responded to the pro-Trump crowd and how they treat Black Lives Matter supporters over the summer.
“No one can tell me that if it were a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they would not have been treated in a very, very different way from the crowd of thugs who invaded the Capitol,” he said. “We all know that this is true. And it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Today” program, former US Capitol police chief Terrance Gainer characterized the police response as “failure” and added that it “raises many questions”.
“There are clearly flaws,” he said. “There have to be a lot of questions asked and answers given. What is very clear is that the police underestimated the violent crowd and its size, and overestimated its ability to control it ”.
Protesters managed to enter the Capitol on Wednesday, the first major breach since the 1812 war, when British soldiers burned the legislature. Trump had spoken to his supporters earlier in the day and encouraged them to go to the Capitol to protest Congress’s count of the Electoral College vote.
The authorities eventually managed to clean the mob’s building and allow lawmakers to return to what was previously considered a ceremonial process. House and Senate members worked overnight to certify ballots from all 50 states, confirming Biden’s victory.
