The Elephant Is Still in the Room at the U.S. Capitol

How Congress is failing to protect the U.S. Capitol Complex

AI generated. Source: Barton Dunant.

Command and control failures during the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, resulted in death and injuries, trauma to the onsite workforce, a destabilized federal governmental series of processes (including delaying the electoral vote count), a significant breach of the site, and damage to property. The responsibility and accountability for all of this remains with Congress itself.

A straight line can be drawn from what has happened in the past, to failures that will likely occur in the future. This is based on:

• the current organizational structure of the operational command of the Capitol Police Board,
• current policies/procedures for mutual aid beyond those resources already within the Capitol Complex, and
• the myriad of continuity of government priorities that Congress has itself, which are systemically drawn away from prioritizing life safety.

Without changes, these failures once again will harm people, places and property, during the next no-notice incident of scale impacting the U.S. Capitol Complex. Regardless of who is in the White House, our federal system of government mistakenly separates a duty to…