U.S. Capitol Police 'betrayed by their leadership' on Jan. 6, top police union official says

U.S. Capitol Police officers were “betrayed by their leadership” on Jan. 6, 2021, when they were dispatched to defend the Congress against an assault by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters without being provided with the intelligence, equipment and other resources needed to protect themselves, the top official of the country’s largest police union said Monday.

“Those officers out there were betrayed on a number of levels,” Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the police union whose members include officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, said in an interview for the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.

“They were betrayed by their leadership on that day, because they were sent out ... unprepared and unknowing of the level of force and weren’t prepared in terms of the equipment that they went out with and the strategies that they employed to deal with the overwhelming and totally hostile force that addressed them.”

Pasco’s comments were among the strongest yet from the police union about the riot at the U.S. Capitol last year that left 140 officers injured, including some with head wounds, cracked ribs and smashed spinal disks. One officer, Brian Sicknick of the Capitol Police, died from strokes after being attacked by the mob. Other officers died by suicide after defending the Capitol that day.

Pasco cited what he called “abundant, ample information” from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement sources about possible violence that day that was never passed along to the rank and file. “The officers were never apprised of the potential for the kind of event that occurred that day,” he said. “And in that sense, the fact that they were overwhelmed is due in at least some part to the fact that they were unprepared for the assault.”

But Pasco did not restrict his criticism to the leadership of the Capitol Police. “And then, after the fact, [they] were betrayed to a degree by ... the Congress of the United States,” he added. “They’re the people that they look to for their training, their equipment, the leadership and so forth that puts them in a position to do the extraordinarily important things that they’re called upon to do. ... They were betrayed by the people they were protecting. And an awful lot of people have lost their jobs, or their careers have been ruined by what happened that day.”

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And in a veiled jab at Republican members who have minimized the assault, Pasco said: “I’m saddened and troubled by anyone who couldn’t see the heroism of the cops that day and be supportive of it.” Pasco is a veteran Washington player who was for years a top official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, serving as a key negotiator with Congress on gun policy and crime issues. In the process, he forged close relations with Senate leaders, including the then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden.

So it was not a surprise when the White House, worried about the political impact of rising crime rates, reached out to Pasco and the FOP as it sought to craft an executive order to achieve one of the administration’s top domestic priorities: police reform that would address public outrage over police misconduct, particularly against Black men.

But, said Pasco, the language in a leaked draft of the order, referring to the need to combat “systemic racism” in law enforcement, immediately turned his members off. It “characterized the police in a manner which would lead the public to believe that we were the villains ... as opposed to a group of hardworking individuals around the country, 800,000-plus risking their lives every day, anonymously and sometimes heroically, to keep the country safe.”

The upshot, said Pasco, is that police officers are increasingly demoralized. “They’ve been knocked around pretty significantly over the last year or two in particular,” he said. “They’re angry, they’re hurt, they’re frustrated. And they’re still out there every day ... trying to make their communities as safe as is possible under very trying circumstances.”