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. 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, Politico reports. 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. 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. “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 the force 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. 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. 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 up to 400 employees since the riot, not counting hundreds of others hired to backfill retirements and attrition. Back in 2020, the FBI and multiple law enforcement agencies 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.