Chief of Capitol police blasts pro-Trump assault as ‘criminal riotous behavior’

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News

In his first public comments since Wednesday’s siege of the U.S. Capitol, the department’s Chief of Police Steven Sund condemned the riots as the worst day in his 30-year career.

" (USCP) officers and our law enforcement partners responded valiantly when faced with thousands of individuals involved in violent riotous actions as they stormed the United States Capitol Building,” Sund said in a statement.

“These individuals actively attacked United States Capitol Police Officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and took up other weapons against our officers.”

Sund said that as officers tried to extinguish violent events across the Capitol Complex, they simultaneously responded to two pipe bomb reports and a suspicious vehicle.

The department’s Hazardous Materials Response Team determined both pipe bomb devices were real and disabled the potentially deadly explosives before turning them over to the FBI for analysis.

It took more than 18 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies — plus members of the National Guard — to quell the riots that saw four dead and dozens injured.

Sund said more than 50 members of the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police department sustained injuries during the attack and many required hospitalization for severe injuries.

The veteran police chief remarked the events were incomparable to anything he’d witnessed in more than three decades of policing the nation’s capital. He distinguished the riots from other protests that have drawn thousands of Americans to take to the streets of D.C.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C. Maintaining public safety in an open environment – specifically for First Amendment activities – has long been a challenge,” Sund wrote.

“The USCP had a robust plan established to address anticipated First Amendment activities. But make no mistake – these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”

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