Speed and intensity, especially in response to potential threats, was a consistent theme in Sund’s remarks to the House Committee on Appropriations last February.
When a congressman asked Sund to explain the November 2019 lockdown, he described it as “a day I’ll remember for a long time.”
That morning there had been a tip about a possible aircraft moving bizarrely near the Capitol. Then, something – no one knew quite what – showed up on a radar screen.
Capitol Police sprung into action. For between 23 and 26 minutes, officers stood ready to evacuate the building at a moment’s notice. And then, nothing happened.
Sund shook his head and said it was nothing.
“It wasn’t a drone, it wasn’t a —” Ryan continued.
“It was nothing, yup,” Sund responded. “It was a radar anomaly that wasn’t even in the area.”
It remains unclear now how the rest of the money – or the specialized equipment detailed in the 2017-2018 expenditures – may have figured into Capitol Police’s response on Jan, 6.
Another $3.8 million went to MC Dean, Inc., a Tysons, Va. company that provides electronic security, audio and visual surveillance and cyber-intelligence. Yet Capitol Police appeared caught off guard as rioters scaled walls, pushed into tunnels and bashed in windows in seemingly coordinated moves.
Daniel Schuman, policy director of the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress, told USA TODAY that the Capitol Police has essentially been building an empire, and Congress rarely opposes their budget requests.
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