AUSTIN, Texas — KVUE's Bryan Mays was joined by Fred Burton, a former police officer, former special agent and current executive director of the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence, to discuss the events that occurred in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Below is a full transcript of their conversation:
Let's start with this. You were a police officer in our nation's capital at one point in your great career. You, as you saw today unfold, what were your initial thoughts? Of course, protecting the U.S. Capitol is a huge job. What did you think when you saw what was happening today?
Well, I've not seen anything like this before, Bryan. I have certainly been involved in and watched and monitored a lot of large-scale demonstrations before, just having worked in the area on various protective details and certainly running the protective intelligence division for the State Department. But I've got to be honest with you, I have not seen anything like this. And the one thing that comes to mind to me is there appears to be an intelligence failure and a lack of contingency plans put into place with additional resources on standby. And look, there's no shortage of police and law enforcement resources in the D.C. area, when you start looking at all the mutual aid agreements that are in place between Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland, Northern Virginia, the Virginia State Police, Maryland State Police and so forth.
So where was the failure today?
Well, I think it's two-pronged. I mean, certainly, we're going to have to let the dust settle to see. But everybody knew this was going to take place. So you get back into who knew what and when was their source coverage of this event to indicate that there was going to be a mob violence to direct action in an effort to actually take over the Capitol. So, there's an intelligence failure. And then secondarily, you have a contingency plan failure in that typically you would have the U.S. Capitol Police working with the Homeland Security, the FBI and the U.S. Park Police there, an agency that probably not many of our viewers are familiar with, but they're well known for doing extraordinarily good work when it comes to crowd control on the D.C. Mall and around the monuments and so forth. So, I'm a bit surprised that this took law enforcement by surprise like it did.
You mentioned multiple agencies. Is that what it's going to take? We know the inauguration, Fred, is just a couple of weeks away from now – another huge event. Is it going to take that coordinated effort not just to get this under control, but to protect future events from things like this happening?
Well, Bryan, as you and I have chatted over the years, in past inaugural events, there is a plan in place that the U.S. Secret Service activates where they call an additional law enforcement personnel from local and state jurisdictions to help them with the inauguration. But with the leadup, with the events today, the one thing, again, to emphasize is that I'm somewhat surprised that there was not a lot of federal resources already on standby. And it seems like the horse has already left the barn and that all these resources are now being called in to kind of stabilize what's occurred.
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Are you concerned with the ease it seemed that these people were able to get into the U.S. Capitol, into the speaker's office? Are you concerned that this has happened with such a seeming ease today?
Well, it's a difficult building to protect. I've been in and out of there with protecting us at the time. It's the people's house. The U.S. Capitol Police have a very difficult job, but the evacuation of VIPs and safe havens and the emergency action plans to disperse people inside so they're not in harm's way are the kind of plans that you pull off a shelf, you activate. So, for me, as I look at this, and having studied mob violence attacks in the past, I boiled down to, again, there's two key points: there appears to be an intelligence failure and a failure to have adequate contingency plans in place with additional resources on a quick reaction plan to get there quickly to stabilize so this kind of event doesn't unfold.
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