Garland to speak ahead of Jan. 6 anniversary

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said not increasing his department’s budget would deal a significant blow to the agency trying to grow after the Jan. 6 riot exposed catastrophic failures. 

“It would impact just about everything we are trying to do in terms of making and sustaining improvements,” Manger said in a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, if the department is held to their previous budget.

“We’d have to suspend our health and wellness initiatives that we have started but I think the biggest impact would be our inability to increase our staffing which is so critical,” Manger said.

“All that we would be able to do is replace the people that left. We can’t survive and continue, we have to increase our staffing,” he added.

US Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told lawmakers on the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday that the department is “absolutely” better prepared to defend the Capitol today than it was on Jan. 6, 2021, but said there is still a “challenge” in “keeping up with the number of threats” directed at lawmakers.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, asked Manger about the flood of threats directed at lawmakers in 2021, and referred to previous statements from Manger who said the department tracked more than 9,000 threats in 2021, an increase that is straining the department’s resources to analyze threats.

The gravity of the Jan. 6 anniversary is not lost on Manger, who said the department now has a blueprint for a response.

“We have an incident action plan prepared for tomorrow, this is a copy, it’s 25 pages long, everyone’s responsibilities are laid out, this information is shared with everyone,” Manger said.

Of more than 100 recommendations made after the January 6 attack by the Capitol Police Inspector General, Michael Bolton, more than 90 have either been addressed or fully completed. However, Manger acknowledged there is more work to do.

“We have assigned an inspector to work full time for the next several months to look at the recommendations that are not completed and to see what we need to do to complete them,” Manger said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, noted that the Department of Justice has brought “over 700 criminal cases” against insurrectionists involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

Klobuchar asked Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger if he agreed that it’s “particularly important” to hold those who attacked Capitol Police officers accountable for Jan. 6.

Manger told Klobuchar, “if they committed a crime they should be prosecuted.”

He said that the Capitol Police are continuing to work closely with DOJ and law enforcement around the country on their investigations into people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said that the police department “will be tested again.”

“I don’t know who it’s going to be or when it’s going to be,” he told lawmakers during a Senate hearing.

Manger said that “what will be different” is that the police department will be paying much more attention to the information that “we gather ahead of time” and “putting together a better plan” and “not making panic calls later on” like on Jan. 6.

Manger added that he was “not criticizing” the people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He said those people faced a “difficult challenge” that day. He added that he is “not looking behind me,” rather he is “looking forward.”

On Jan. 6, he said, the Capitol Police “didn’t have the people, we didn’t act on the intelligence, and we just weren’t prepared the way we should have been,” and “that’s going to change.”

“Next time that we’re tested, we will not be making those same mistakes,” Manger said.

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger addressed the “morale” of his department’s officers, saying that an individual’s morale is in the “eye of the beholder.”

He said you’re “always going to have cops” who say the department’s “morale is worse than it’s ever been.” But at the same, there will be cops who are “happy to be there and love their job.”

“These officers need to believe in their hearts that this department cares about them,” Manger said.

He said that on Jan. 6, the Capitol Police department “let them down in so many ways” and the department needs to “take responsibility for fixing those failures” and “making sure that never happens again.”

Manger said that this will “take time” and that for “some officers” it “might take until we’re tested again” and “show we’re ready for that test.”

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told members of the Senate this morning at a hearing that his police department needs to “expand and advance our abilities to investigate threats” against Congress.

He said that in order to “expand our protection capabilities,” it is his recommendation that the US Capitol Police should “create a new bureau” to investigate threats and do intelligence work. He said that this would require the appointment of an additional assistant chief at the department.

The official said he believes creating this new unit that focuses on threats and intelligence “is the direction that we need to go.”

He added that it speaks “directly to the IG’s recommendation” that the Capitol Police “move towards more protection-focused” capabilities.

The US Capitol Police board is detailing a list of changes — from trainings to new recruitment efforts, hoping to convince members of Congress the department has significantly improved since the Jan. 6 attack exposed problems, while acknowledging the agency is significantly understaffed.

In a 10-page report obtained by CNN, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson, House Sergeant at Arms William Walker, Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton, and Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote that the department has either implemented or started working on 90 of 103 recommendations made by the Capitol Police Inspector General, Michael Bolton.

Manger is testifying this morning before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration about oversight after the Capitol attack. Changes at the department are laid out in his statement to the committee and in the report, first reported by Politico.

As the department seeks to course correct operationally, a flood of departures has complicated the effort. Fewer officers among the ranks can make finding the time to train officers a challenge and extend overtime hours.

The report says the department has lost 136 officers since Jan. 6, up from an average of up to 90 per year. Many officers who joined Capitol Police following the Sept. 11 attack are reaching 20 years of service and are retiring, the report says. Others left voluntarily.

“This is in addition to the 175 officers who are on some form of approved leave,” the report says. “This fact, along with the temporary closure of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) as a result of the global pandemic, have contributed to the USCP’s shortfall of 447 officers, causing a rise in mandatory overtime requirements and adding stress to a work force already stretched thin.”

To combat the personnel shortage, the department is hiring contract security officers, increasing recruit classes, issuing retention bonuses and hazard pay, and looking to hire from other federal law enforcement agencies or rehire people who have left the department.

Capitol Police hope to bring on 280 officers per year to jump ahead of attrition, the report says.

The department also has addressed a problem exposed by the Jan. 6 riot — a lack of coordination with other agencies. In the report, the Capitol Police Board says Capitol Police has conducted joint exercises with other agencies such as the DC National Guard. 

CNN previously reported that Capitol Police changed intelligence gathering and sharing within the department and beyond and added a former Secret Service agent to reform operational plans for large events.  

In hearings examining the department’s failures, lawmakers wondered why the agency staffed Jan. 6 with only slightly more officers than on a normal day, and far fewer than for other high-profile events, such as the State of the Union address by the President. 

In an effort to act more autonomously, the report says the department is working to develop its own “SEAR,” or special event assessment rating. SEARs are typically issued by the Department of Homeland Security and can elevate the seriousness of an event to help coordinate planning. However, a Government Accountability Office report in August pointed out a SEAR was never issued for Jan. 6 because agencies were unclear how to request the designation — a lapse that may have limited resources.

Working with other agencies has become a central focus for Police Chief Tom Manger, a former local chief who knows the Capitol region’s law enforcement leaders well. 

In September, the agency displayed its force and partnerships at an event intended to bring awareness to alleged mistreatment of Jan. 6 rioters — a right-wing effort to recast the rioters as political martyrs. The event amounted to a scrimmage when only a handful of protestors showed up in the shadow of hundreds of police from more than a dozen agencies. 

The report also outlines specific training for a crucial unit within Capitol Police: the Civil Disturbance Unit. The CDU platoons combat rioters on the front line. The department says they have given basic CDU training to 110 officers and trained more than 100 others in non-lethal weapons.

Capitol Police intelligence has seen a marked shift as well, the report says. CNN previously reported it was upended just two months before the riot, causing confusion and frustration in the unit that would help determine the department’s plan for Jan. 6.

The report says the department is still looking for a permanent director of the unit. The former director, Jack Donohue, joined in Fall 2020 and left the department in the months following the riot.

Changes include daily intelligence briefings for department leaders — a gap that former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund complained of when he testified following the riot. Sund claimed he never knew about critical intelligence that might have changed his plan. 

The report says the department also now holds quarterly in-person briefings at roll calls and bi-weekly classified intelligence briefings and begun a revision of standard operation procedures that is not yet finished. This change seeks to address a major complaint by rank-and-file that they were blindsided by the flood of people ready to attack.

The report says the department has purchased police simulator training, new riot gear and oxygen supply kids. Further, the department plans to buy new shields, non-lethal munitions and long-range acoustical devices, which can be highly effective crowd control measures.

While the department tightens its operations, it is also honoring the officers who died following the riot.

“The USCP will soon inaugurate the Howard C. Liebengood Center for Wellness so employees have a central location for all their wellness needs,” the report says. Officer Liebengood took his own life just days after the riot.

US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told a Senate committee this morning that the department is better prepared today than a year ago to respond to a breach of the Capitol.

“If Jan. 6 taught us anything, it’s that preparation matters,” he told lawmakers.

The police chief noted some of the changes that have been implemented to improve coordination between agencies and disseminate information before high-risk events, including the creation of the department’s first critical incidence response plan to more quickly get assistance from partner agencies.

“And while more work remains to be done, the men and women of Capitol police stand ready to fulfill their mission each and every day,” he said.

During his remarks at a Senate hearing this morning, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer recounted some of the details of Jan. 6.

He said that the police were “outnumbered” and “underequipped” to handle the insurrectionists storming the Capitol that day. But he praised the actions of the police that, Schumer said, “allowed us to come back that night” and “finish the counting” of the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election.

Schumer said that the rioters’ objective to overthrow the election failed and in the year since the attack, Congress has “got a lot done to strengthen” the police presence at the Capitol.

He noted that the Senate appointed a new Sergeant at Arms, Karen Gibson, and brought in the “first all-women leadership team” in the history of the Senate Sergeant at Arms. In addition, they selected a new chief of the Capitol Police, J. Thomas Manger, and authorized critical supplemental funding for the Capitol Police — including “tens of millions” in additional overtime pay, hazard pay and bonuses.

Schumer also said that they passed legislation authorizing the chief of the Capitol Police to bring in the National Guard. “We all know what we went through that day trying to get the National Guard to come quickly,” he said

The majority leader reiterated that Jan. 6 was an “attempt to reverse — through violent means — the outcome of a fair and free election.” He said that the “root cause” of that plot is the “big lie” that is still “with us today” being pushed by former president Donald Trump.

Schumer said that “without addressing the root causes” of Jan. 6, the ‘insurrection will not be an aberration” and may “become the norm” if the Senate doesn’t act further.