BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) – After U.S. Capitol Police faced backlash for not being prepared enough for the riots at the Capitol building on Wednesday, WBZ NewsRadio spoke with a security expert from New York about what went wrong.
Tens of thousands of President Trump's supporters met on Capitol Hill Wednesday for a rally called "Stop The Steal." Demonstrators breached security measures within hours, and forcefully entered the chambers of Congress, where lawmakers had to be evacuated out.
Tim Gallagher, who is the Managing Director for Kroll Security Risk Management, served as the Director of the FBI's field office in Washington D.C. from 2014 to 2016, also working through two presidential inaugurations. He said he is shocked the group was able to breach the capitol building with the ease they did, given the pre-planned protocols in place for protests and other large crowd events.
“There’s obviously vehicle barriers in streets themselves, and you would expect to have a perimeter well out on the lawn there of potentially national guard, or police in riot gear," Gallagher said. "We did not have that."
He added that more preparation and deterrence measures could have allowed authorities to gain control over the crowds in the streets, rather than in the halls of Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the breach a failure of leadership at the top of the Capitol Police Department, and the department's chief Steven Sund has submitted a letter of resignation amid the criticism.
"Obviously it was a breakdown, and these are planners, these folks who are involved with this," Gallagher said. "And I've worked with them all and they should have been more of a presence, a deterrent presence, at least at the steps if not further out from the building itself."
When asked about the widespread accusations that President Trump incited the crowd at a rally right before the breach, Gallagher did not provide a comment, but said in general "when individuals incite crowds to commit violent acts, and people get hurt, there is liability attached."
WBZ NewsRadio's Kim Tunnicliffe (@KimWBZ) reports.
Written by Rachel Armany
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