As Congress prepares to certify another election on Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol Police looks like a vastly different agency than it was ahead of the attack on the Capitol four years ago.
Security officials on the Hill were widely excoriated for the lack of preparedness ahead of the attempted insurrection, prompting multiple high-level resignations in the following weeks. An oft-repeated criticism was that officials should have requested help prior to the attack, given clear signals that there would be a huge protest coming to the area with the potential to turn violent. Those issues coincided with a steep increase in violent threats made against members of Congress.
With that in mind, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger has sought to shift the agency’s identity as a traditional police force with a focus on Capitol Hill to a “protective force” built on intelligence gathering, threat assessment and flexing its nationwide authority and jurisdiction. It now has an intelligence bureau with dozens of agents, as well as field offices in Florida and California, with more possible in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Texas.
But those shifts come at a cost. Capitol Police now operates with a $791.5 million budget, up more than 70 percent since the Capitol attack. Even accounting for inflation, that’s more than seven times the 9/11-era budget. Total spending is expected to reach $1 billion in the next few years, with officials requesting another 14 percent increase for next year’s budget.
“If all we had to do was protect the members of Congress on Capitol grounds, our budget would be a fraction of what it is,” Manger said in a recent interview. “We’ve got to protect the members of Congress all over the country.”
That has prompted some lawmaker questions about oversight. While Congress is the one that greenlights that funding, there’s an inescapable conflict given members’ increased fears for their own safety. No lawmakers publicly criticize USCP for its additional efforts to protect members — a difficult and complex task — but some would like to see transparency ramp up as more cash flows to the department, wondering if the increased money has really translated to increased safety.
“I think we need a lot of oversight on the United States Capitol Police processes, and that includes budget,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who sits on the House Administration Committee. “We need to be more active. And we need more transparency coming from leadership.”
In addition to the intelligence gathering operations, the new money has also gone toward addressing staffing shortages and attrition, with mixed results. Capitol Police leaders were already trying to grow the department before Jan. 6, as many of the officers were approaching retirement eligibility. Then hundreds more officers left en masse after the attack, too. Capitol Police officials now say that the first responder’s unit, expanded bicycle team, crowd management and civil disturbance units are “now appropriately trained and equipped.” While the department is still recruiting aggressively, staff has grown by between 300 and 400 employees since the riot, not counting hundreds of others hired to backfill retirements and attrition.
Back in December 2021, the FBI and multiple law enforcement agencies from NYPD to Washington State had raised concerns about the possibility that Donald Trump’s supporters would turn violent on Jan. 6. Capitol Police’s own intelligence unit saw social media posts about a plot to breach the complex — complete with maps of the building’s tunnels and explicit threats of violence against members of Congress.
But on Jan. 5 2021, guidance circulated within Capitol Police that “at this time there are no specific known threats related to the Joint Session of Congress Electoral College Vote Certification.” It couldn’t have been further from the truth or more disconnected from various intelligence, including the department’s own.
After years of expansion and training, Manger now describes the capabilities of the intelligence bureau of USCP as “world class.” He said it includes social media, emails, telephone calls and every other avenue for threats that are made against members and the Capitol. Manger told senators last week that the department has implemented all of the official recommendations for changes to USCP made by lawmakers in the wake of the attack.
One key area they’re still trying to expand is threat assessment teams that handle the growing threats against lawmakers. Manger estimated that, in 2024, threats will eclipse previous years to “well over 8,000” against members and the Capitol complex, compared to just 1,000 to 2,000 a decade ago. He said that despite increased staffing, caseloads for the special agents investigating the threats are still too high. There’s also significant turnover in these high-pressure roles that are outside the protection of the Capitol Police union.
“This has been a really, really difficult cycle for a number of members whose families have been threatened,” Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) said. “They have death threats out for them, they have to have special security.”
Capitol Police also monitors residential security for members of leadership — changes were made to that process after the attack on Paul Pelosi in former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home last year. There has been a drumbeat of demand from lawmakers for more protection when they are outside the heavily protected Capitol grounds, whether in their districts, in transit and especially at events where many members gather together and could be targeted.
“We’re concerned about the safety of our family members, ourselves and our staff both here locally and in our district offices and our homes,” said Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). “This is escalating … it’s nasty out there.”
Capitol Police insist these changes have made them better equipped to deal with threats. Manger called their responsibility to protect lawmakers a “24/7 no-fail mission” and said that has required more officers, training and administrative staff — all of which takes more money.
But concerns about oversight remain. After the 2021 attack, both lawmakers and outside groups urged an overhaul of the oversight apparatus for the USCP, which largely falls to the Capitol Police board. The halting and uncoordinated response of the board while the Hill was overrun drew calls for restructuring.
The 141-year-old board — which is made up of the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol, with a nonvoting presence by the Capitol Police chief — was built to encourage a deliberative decision-making process, not for responding quickly to a violent crisis on the Capitol’s doorstep. Resignations and firings led to a wholesale replacement of the board after the attack, but the structure remains unchanged.
“Do I think that there’s tweaks that could be made to make the whole sort of oversight system a little better? Absolutely,” Manger said. But “I’m trying to work within that structure.”
Not everyone is so sure those changes have helped matters. Griffiths said that USCP still has issues with being transparent with lawmakers who are explicitly tasked with overseeing the department, saying “my assessment is that it is not improving.”
“Congress propelled Capitol Police funding and manpower into the stratosphere but failed to launch the accountability mechanisms that would keep the police on mission,” longtime transparency advocate Daniel Schuman from the American Governance Institute said in a recent interview.
Meanwhile, Capitol Police funding has been on a steady upward climb since 1998, when a gunman bypassed a security checkpoint and killed two USCP officers in his attempt to enter the Capitol office suite of then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay. The Capitol Police began seeking — and receiving — a reliable series of budgetary increases which have not slowed.
The Capitol Police are requesting $906 million, a 14 percent increase over current funding levels for fiscal 2025. The department’s funding will be finalized as lawmakers negotiate a spending deal in the new year.
Jordain Carney and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
