WASHINGTON (AP) – Lawmakers are promising an investigation into how the police handled Wednesday’s violent rape at the Capitol, questioning whether the lack of preparation allowed a crowd to occupy and vandalize the building.
The United States Capitol Police, charged with protecting Congress, turned to other officials for help with the crowd that oppressed the complex and made lawmakers go into hiding. Both police and Trump supporters implanted irritating chemicals during the hour’s occupation of the complex, before it was cleaned up on Wednesday night.
Four people died, one of them a woman who was shot and killed inside the Capitol. Three other people died after suffering “medical emergencies” related to the rape, said Robert Contee, head of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
Police said 52 people were arrested until Wednesday night, including 26 at the Capitol. Fourteen policemen were injured, Contee said.
Deputy Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chairman of the House Management Committee, said the breach “raises serious security concerns”, adding that her committee will work with House and Senate leaders to review the police response – and its preparation.
Lawmakers crouched under desks and put on gas masks while police uselessly tried to barricade the building when people marched to the Capitol from a demonstration near the White House in support of President Donald Trump. The Washington mayor instituted an evening curfew in an attempt to contain the violence.
Dep. Val Demings, D-Fla., A former police chief, said it was “painfully obvious” that the Capitol police “was not prepared for today. I certainly thought that we would have a stronger show of strength, that steps would have been taken in the beginning to ensure that there was a designated area for protesters at a safe distance from the Capitol. ″
In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday night, Demings said it looked like the police were understaffed, adding that “it didn’t look like they had a clear operational plan to really deal with” thousands of protesters who came down to Capitol Hill after Trump’s complaints of a “fraudulent election. ″
The rioters were instigated by Trump, who spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and asked his supporters to go to Washington to protest Congress’s formal approval of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The protests interrupted these procedures for almost seven hours.
The crowd broke windows, entered the Senate and House chambers and went to lawmakers’ offices, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Demings said there were “many unanswered questions and I am very determined to get answers to those questions about what went wrong today”.
A police spokeswoman could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Congresswoman Karen Bass, D-Calif., Said she was outraged to see reports on social media of a Capitol police officer posing for a photo with a protester. “Would you take a selfie with someone who was robbing a bank?” she asked. “I can’t imagine if a few thousand demonstrators (Black Lives Matters) had landed on the Capitol … that there would be 13 people arrested.”
Congressman Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, suggested that there could be leadership changes in the Capitol police.
“I think it is quite clear that many people will be out of a job very, very soon, because this is a shame both on behalf of the mafia and the president, the insurrection and the coup attempt, but also the lack of professional planning and dealing with what we knew would happen, ”said Ryan.
___
The Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.