Welcome, to Heroes Behind the Badge, we tell real stories about real cops, we

expose the fake news about police, and we give you the real truth.

This podcast is brought to you by Citizens Behind the Badge, the leading voice of the American

people in support of the men and women in law enforcement, dedicated

to ending the disastrous movement to defund and defame the police.

So for those of you who may be hearing about Citizens Behind the Badge for

the very first time, let me explain a little bit about who we are.

Citizens Behind the Badge was formed as a 501(c)4 advocacy organization in 2020.

We are approved by the IRS.

We serve as the leading voice of the American people in support of the men and women in law enforcement.

Our mission, to end the disastrous movement to defund and defame the police and ensure that our officers

receive support and respect that they need and deserve to keep America safe.

My name is Dennis Collins.

I'm a founding board member of Citizens Behind the Badge.

And let me introduce our Citizens Behind the Badge team.

First of all, let me introduce Bill Erfurth.

Bill is a founding board member of Citizens Behind the Badge.

He is a retired Miami-Dade police lieutenant with 26 years of experience.

One of Bill's most interesting and notable assignments was the commander of the tactical narcotics team.

Under his leadership, that became the most productive team in Miami-Dade police history.

And was nationally recognized.

His very final assignment of his career was also as a commander of the multi agency violent crime task force

for almost 10 years, Bill hosted, along with three of his active duty police colleagues, a radio show

produced and hosted a radio show called cop net, the police radio

network, which became nationally syndicated in over a hundred markets.

He is the executive producer of two documentaries, Heroes Behind

the Badge, Heroes Behind the Badge, Sacrifice and Survival.

He also was the technical advisor to Jerry Bruckheimer

and Michael Bay for Bad Boys 2, and even appeared in the movie.

Yes, he did, for sure.

Hello, Mr.

Bill Erfurth.

Thank you, Dennis.

I'm hiring you as my agent.

You can't afford me, but that's okay.

Alright.

Okay, alongside Bill, On our podcast will be the founder and president of Citizens Behind the Badge.

Craig Floyd.

Now, many of you already know Craig Floyd.

He is one of law enforcement's strongest advocates.

He's the founding CEO emeritus of the national law enforcement officer memorial fund under his

leadership, the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.

C.

was built.

Craig also spearheaded the drive to see one of his dreams come true.

The dream of a National Law Enforcement Museum became a reality thanks to Craig.

No one has worked longer or harder than Craig Floyd to support law enforcement and to help change

America's attitude about the profession and honoring and saving lives.

Craig Floyd, thank you for your leadership.

Welcome to the team.

Couldn't be prouder to have spent 34 years leading the

memorial fund and now, uh, five years, uh, into Citizens Behind the Badge.

It's a great honor to tell the stories of these, uh, amazing men and women who

go out every day, risking their life for our safety and for our protection.

And it's a Pleasure to be here on the podcast with all of you and our special guests today.

We have, uh, before we get to our special guests and you guys are going to love.

Our special guest before we get to that, though, we, Bill and Craig would like to introduce the podcast

with kind of a roll call with kind of some of the latest and greatest of what's going on in law enforcement.

So, uh, Craig, I'll throw it back to you to start off today's roll call.

Yeah, and Bill, I wanted you to be aware of something.

I think you've seen it, but recently, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, my old organization,

put out their annual fatality report, uh, how many officers died in the line of duty in 2024.

It's based on preliminary data, but the numbers are pretty, uh, pretty solid.

Uh, it said, unfortunately, 147 law enforcement officers across this country died in the line of

duty last year, and sadly, that was a 25 percent increase over the number of officers who died in 2023.

I was very saddened to see that report.

I thought the numbers were moving in the right direction, but, uh, but again, this job is so dangerous.

We lost 52 officers last year by gunfire.

That was the number one cause of death.

46 officers died in traffic related incidents, often the

most, uh, deadly, uh, incident for law enforcement in this country.

And one of the things that I'm particularly, uh, concerned about, and I was, uh, with the Memorial Fund

and I continue to this day, and I think the message needs to get out.

Too many officers are dying in vehicle crashes.

All right.

They have to respond at high rates of speed to emergencies.

They might be chasing a fleeing suspect.

Um, but it upsets me to think that many of these officers who die

were not wearing their seatbelts, about half of them, actually.

And I'm just interested in your thoughts, having been a cop for so many years.

I'm sure you were in many of those situations where you're driving at high rates of speed.

Um, What is the possible reason why a police officer would

not be wearing their seatbelt knowing the dangers that exist?

You know, always that comes up and we talk about it at length.

A lot of cops don't want to wear their seatbelts for two reasons.

They think it's going to limit their opportunity to get out of the car quickly.

They need to bail out in a critical situation, a gun fight, something like that.

The other one is that they feel that the seatbelt itself, especially if you're a right handed shot, is

going to hinder your ability to draw your weapon, uh, from a seated position while you're buckled in.

You know, it's interesting that you brought that up because years ago I actually filled in for you in Ohio and

I sat on the stage with Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, and I addressed a huge contingent of law enforcement

people and I talked about that and I said, you need to wear your seatbelt.

There's more cops that are killed every year in car accidents than gunfire and I explained to them and

I used my experiences when I was running the tactical narcotics teams.

There were countless times where we draw our weapons while we were still buckled in because you didn't have

the opportunity, you know, we were called the jump out boys and we'd come flying in and, and, uh, do these raids.

Uh, there were incidents when I was working where we would fire our weapons out of the windows.

Um, you know, and we, we actually trained that way at the range.

So it's definitely doable.

Uh, I never had a problem with it.

I never could.

I never had an issue where I didn't feel that my weapon was accessible

and, uh, I think everybody should definitely wear their seatbelt.

I, I hope all the law enforcement professionals listening to this podcast, uh, take that, uh,

Uh, in the mind as they, uh, you know, get behind the wheel of their car, please buckle your seatbelt.

It's going to save your life from, uh, it may be serious injury, but it could kill you.

And, uh, this is a tough job.

Uh, take every safety precaution possible.

Um, as I reflect on this report, uh, 147 officers died in the line of duty last year.

I can't help but think that when we built the national law enforcement

officers memorial and dedicated it in 1991, there were 12, 560.

61 names on that memorial.

It was less than half filled all the memorial walls, and we thought it would

be at least 100 years before we ever had to worry about those walls being filled.

And we hope that they never would be.

Unfortunately, it took just about 30 years.

For the walls of the National Memorial to be filled.

There's now more than 24,000 names, uh, on the memorial today.

And, uh, sadly with this report, we know there's gonna be hundreds more that will be added.

This may, uh, during National Police Week.

Uh, bill.

Uh, couple other quick stories.

One came out of Fremont, California, you know, with the defund and defame the police movement.

We know that thousands of cops left the profession.

Many retired, many others resigned and went into other professions.

They were so fed up with all the all the viral, you know, the Nasty things that were being said about them and

and officers being charged with crimes for simply doing their job They left the profession and so there's a police

shortage crisis now in this country Uh that we've talked about so much over the last five years And Citizens

Behind the Badge Fremont, California, their police department has had such a crisis of police officer shortage

that they're offering a 100,000 cash incentive to lateral transfers, officers that are serving with other departments.

If they come to Fremont, they get to receive a hundred thousand dollar bonus.

And, you know, when I read about this, I thought of you, Bill, I mean, you've been retired for a few years, but, uh,

would that be enough of an incentive maybe to get you back on the job?

You know, that's surprising that they're offering that much money, but that just

tells you how sad it is right now is the, uh, with police recruiting.

Would I accept that?

Uh, Craig, you know, me, I would say not even a million dollars would get me to come back and work again.

Uh, it's just a different era, a different time.

I'm a happy camper.

I don't have all the drama and, uh, I think I've pretty much used up my nine lives.

So.

No.

Yeah, it's a tough job today.

Certainly different than it was when you, uh, retired from the department after 26 years.

Final story, and I always like to end on a good news story.

I read about this the other day, 10 years ago, a guy by the name of Lavelle Schaefer.

He was a homeless man and a young father.

Um, and, uh, his life was, uh, pretty much a mess.

Um, and he went to a homeless shelter and, uh, met up with some people there that gave him some counseling,

offered him some assistance, how to get his life back on track.

Um, and, and just this past year now, we know that Lavelle Shaffer has become a Chicago police officer.

All right.

He, he, uh, lifted himself up, uh, managed to do the things he needed to do to get his life back in order.

And, uh, today he's out there serving and protecting the citizens of Chicago.

Uh, and actually counseling others that were in his predicament, other

young fathers that were in trouble financially or homeless in many cases.

And, uh, And he's helping, uh, the, these folks get their life straight again.

So, uh, I thought that was a good news story.

Um, he said, my life has come full circle.

It still feels like a movie almost.

And, uh, we can only hope that, you know, other people in his situation, dire straits, uh, your life not going

well can, uh, can maybe, uh, improve themselves the way  Lavelle did.

So, uh, Dennis, I'm going to send it back to you to introduce our very special guest.

Uh, he is a true hero behind the badge.

No question.

Thanks for those stories, guys.

Always interesting when you discuss the current events, but today we have a very special guest, uh, Steven Sund.

Steve's law enforcement journey started with the Metropolitan

PD in Washington, DC, he held various leadership positions.

He had a 25 year, uh, highly decorated, highly remarkable career.

His expertise was in critical incident management.

And special events security.

He handled all the major events.

Can you imagine in Washington DC security operations?

Wow.

What a big job.

He commanded the MPD special operations unit and helped coordinate security for presidential inaugurations,

demonstrations, high profile, high profile events in Washington DC.

But Steve is probably best known for his time with the US Capitol police.

Uh, he joined as assistant chief in 2017 and was promoted in 2019 to chief.

He was indeed the chief during the January 6th capitol riot.

And, um, that will a day that will live in infinite infamy for him, and for many.

Uh, Steve is, um, holds master's degrees from the Homeland Security, uh, post Naval graduate school.

He has a bachelor's and a master's from John Hopson, Hopkins university.

Again, his expertise and leadership have been recognized nationwide by

law enforcement experts who still are often calling upon him for assistance.

He received many commendations during his law enforcement career, including

MPD's Achievement Medal and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

He actually received that medal twice, so I think we should ask him about that a little bit later.

Uh, Steve is also and we're proud to say a member of our law enforcement advisory council for Citizens Behind

the Badge, as you know, and add with advocacy group to stop the defund and defame the police movement.

Steve Sund, thank you a million thank yous for taking time to join us today.

We are so glad to have you.

It's an honor to be on with you, gentlemen.

Thank you very much for the invitation.

You know, there was a statement that you made, I

think, in your book or something, and you'd have been all out there.

I mean, you've written the book, uh, hardest thing a man ever has to do is write a book, isn't it?

And, uh, there was a statement that hit, that hit me though.

I had gone from nearly, from 25 years in DC, At MPD as a decorated and widely respected leader.

And in one day, I suddenly became publicly humiliated.

That is unbelievable, isn't it?

But it's the way it happens.

Sometimes we get known for that one day.

Instead of our whole body of work.

So you wrote the book.

You've been on 60 minutes.

You've done all the interviews.

You've had a lot to say.

What was your mission?

What was your goal behind writing the book?

Wow.

I can't say I really started off with a goal.

Um, like any, any good police officer, whenever I did a major event, a critical incident, whether it's a, um,

a special event security afterwards, you always do an after action.

So.

With Speaker Pelosi going on the air and calling for my resignation

on January 7th, less than 24 hours after we got control of the Capitol.

Uh, and then, uh, it was supposed to be a couple of week transition period,

uh, for whoever's going to take my place, uh, for me to work with them.

And they cut, even cut that transition period and had me, uh, removed from my office, uh, immediately.

So that Friday I had to, uh, come in and start moving everything out.

I sat down when I was back home and started just collecting my thoughts, just started writing and

writing and just putting everything down like I was doing an after

action, um, and ended up gathering, you know, information together.

And as more and more information came out, I was finally able after the first hearings in February of 2021 before

the Senate, I was able to actually go back and request my phone records,

video transcripts from the police department to help support my testimony.

And started gathering more and more information kind of,

you know, stitching this whole thing together in after action.

And then I had whistleblowers come out from the intelligence community from the department of defense And

I started getting shocked at what I was hearing and again This thing just continued to grow and it almost grew

to about 800 pages Uh when it finally started getting getting whittled down and turned into this into the book for

me It was telling the story of what really happened, uh in the days and weeks leading up to january 6th on

January 6th and then in the fallout, uh, that occurred after it, uh, one,

so there's an actual, um, legitimate record of what occurred that day.

And two, so, you know, I love law enforcement, uh, love the men and women of law enforcement.

I want to see law enforcement do the best it can, it can.

And a lot of times agencies live and die on their, um, leadership.

You know, you always hear the, uh, the term that, you know, fish rots from the head down.

Um, and I wrote this to really help the leadership, you know, that eventually someone's going to, going to take

this and look and, and see one, how political influences can affect you,

the importance of relationships, mutual aids, things like that.

So, you know, I, I really, the mission for me was.

To gather together, put together an after action, but as it grew, it was finally just to ensure

that people had the actual facts, uh, of what occurred that day.

Every fact that's in there, uh, I tried to footnote, I tried to give you

access to every information, uh, that I based, um, the, the, uh, writing on.

So, you know, it's easy, it's easy for me, the truth is easy

and it's easy to just tell the story because it's based on fact.

For those who may not have had the chance yet to read your book, it's called

Courage Under Fire, Under Siege and Outnumbered, 58 to 1 on January 6th.

And I was talking to you before, I, I, I read a lot of books and I will tell you that book has more footnotes

and more research behind it than any book I've read in a long time.

So it's well worth the read and it's well documented.

In fact, Craig has.

The book right there, Courage Under Fear, mine happens to be a Kindle copy, so I do a lot of Kindle readings,

but I understand it's out in hard, paperback, and of course Kindle.

Yeah, the paperback came out.

Yeah, I was just gonna say real quick.

The paperback came out December 3rd, and you'll notice the subtitle changed.

No longer is it "Outnumbered 58 to 1" it's the "Definitive Account From Inside The Capitol on January 6th.'.

Okay, that's that's the latest.

Because a member of Congress came in and had

told me that book should be the abstraction for January 6th.

They actually actually endorsed, endorsed that.

So it's been I'll tell you, I never expected in my career to write a book.

I've done a couple, you know, I've done a thesis.

I've done a lot of writing in my career.

Never expected to leave writing a book and the response it's gotten from across the country,

especially from law enforcement, has been absolutely incredible.

Let me just say that it's the first book I've read this year.

It took me maybe two, three days at most.

It was riveting.

I stayed up late at night reading it, uh, and, and it taught me

so much, uh, about what I did not know about January 6th.

And I think that's what's so important for our, our viewers of the podcast.

And anybody that really wants to get, uh, behind the scenes and understand what really went on,

read this book, uh, Courage Under Fire, the definitive account from Inside the Capitol on January 6th.

Um, you know, it made me angry though, I must say, Steve, um, the idea that

Uh, you were made out to be, uh, the scapegoat, if you will, for January six.

Uh, you were blamed for improper planning and your officers were crucified and vilified even by

members of Congress that were being protected by these men and women whose lives they saved.

Uh, and yet somehow the Capitol Police and you as the chief were blamed and, and you got a raw deal, my friend,

you are a hero with a capital H and I couldn't be prouder to be working

with you at Citizens Behind the Badge and having you on as our guest today.

Bill, I know you feel the same way and you've, you've gotten a little

irritated by what happened on January 6th and now Steve was treated as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And thank you, Steve, for being with us.

I wanna afford you the opportunity here, and I know you've been on 60 Minutes, you've been on Tucker

Carlson, you've been on most of every media that there is out there.

This is like a long-form forum.

Uh, so we encourage you to feel free to say anything you want, whatever you want to expound on

it, and, uh, definitely interested to hear your side of everything.

Thank you.

Look forward to it,

Steve.

Uh, alright.

Let me read from your book.

It says, uh, you said at the end of the, the chapter leading up to the, uh, events of January 6,

quote, I knew that January 6 would be a busy day, but I thought we had put together a good plan for it.

Based on the intelligence we had, I thought we were ready.

Uh, tell us about the planning 6 and why were you so confident that, uh, things would be okay that day?

So what's important to realize is January six was not

the first, um, uh, Trump rally we had had in Washington, D.

C.

Oftentimes they're referred to as, uh, the mega rallies make America great again.

So we had a mega one in November, uh, mega to December.

I think 1st was November 14th.

2nd was December 12th.

Uh, and then the 3rd 1.

was December 6th.

Um, the intelligence we were receiving was saying the MAGA 6, the, um, um, sorry, MAGA 3 or, um, the January

6th was going to be just like the two previous, uh, MAGA rallies.

The big difference between the MAGA 1 and MAGA 2, they were focused on, um, the Supreme Court swaying the Supreme

Court because they were still involved in, uh, some of the, um, Adjudication

going through the Supreme Court, and now it was focused on the Capitol.

So we knew that the focus of the protest would be the Capitol.

Any, any protest that's coming up to the Capitol is going to be, the focus is going to be the Capitol.

So we had planned on that.

The intelligence I was receiving was, it was going to be just like the previous two MAGA rallies.

So we had fully activated the police department, fully activated all our, all our resources.

Um, Put as many people in hard gear for it.

I can do 273 officers and hard gear, which was gonna be my allotment for the perimeter.

We had a perimeter set up.

That was the exact same perimeter.

We had for the 2 previous mag rallies.

It was using bike, bike rack for the perimeter.

Um, and it was based on the intelligence, based on the briefings I was getting from my intelligence unit,

my intelligence unit was also briefing, uh, members of Congress, uh, and the Capitol Police Board, which I'm sure

we'll probably talk a little bit about that, a politically appointed board that oversees all, uh, all aspects of,

uh, of law enforcement for me, that, you know, coming into it, I felt we had

put together a plan very, very similar to the two previous MAGA rallies.

The big difference for me was because we had a joint session, excuse me, a joint session of Congress taking place,

we had, it was going to require a number of officers to be inside handling the events inside the security inside.

So it cut down on the number of officers I had on the perimeter.

That's what caused me to go and ask for the National Guard on January 3rd.

The fact that I did, I just, I felt I would have liked to have more,

uh, more officers on the perimeter because of the limited amount I had.

Interesting.

I, you know, I read this, uh, message, uh, that you all picked up, uh,

law enforcement intelligence anyway picked up, uh, prior to January 6th.

And here's a message that was posted on social media by a protester.

Be ready to fight.

Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in,

get violent, stop calling this a march or rally or a protest.

Go there ready for war.

We get our president or we die.

Now, it seems to me that that's a pretty good warning that you're,

you're going to expect a lot of trouble on January 6th at the U S Capitol.

Your, your officers were obviously targets based on the social media intelligence.

So what went so terribly wrong?

If you had that kind of information, why wasn't the Capitol better protected?

So go in and as you read through and you see that intelligence coming in, you'll also

see intelligence that listed Um, you may have to kill the palace guards.

You probably remember reading that That's a reference to my uh, my officers But look at the intelligence and a

lot of a lot of the intelligence you have links to and you'll be able to see Um that we're getting none of the

intelligence I had that was coming to me was talking about their social media posts talking about killing Um,

my police officers, social media posts talking about an organized, um, attack at the, at the Capitol, you know, I was

receiving, you know, again, we, they put out my intelligence unit, put out three intelligence assessments, um, all

three of them indicated is going to be previous, just like the two previous, uh, MAGA rallies, uh, not indicating

intelligence, like what you just read, not even footnoted in the intelligence.

Matter of fact, Um, even on the 4th, the 5th, and the 6th, the

last intelligence assessment was produced on Sunday, January 3rd.

Um, even, even on Sunday, I had my intelligence officials briefing members of Congress and the Capitol

Police Board that it was going to be just like the two MAGA rallies.

On the 4th, my intelligence unit put out another, uh, series of reports, a daily intelligence report, indicating

that the probability, and, and, and listen to this, the probability of

acts of civil disobedience and arrests on January 6th are low to improbable.

Think about that.

Yeah.

Um, so that, uh, that was the number one thing that I think, uh, affected our planning,

uh, and cascaded from there was the, it was the failure of intelligence.

Could I, could I ask a follow up question to that?

Because that, that's, that's a great, you know, I, I know you make a lot, you talk a lot about the intelligence

in the book and when I've seen her interviews with you also, but let me

quote something that you, you said in the book, this was a colossal.

US Capitol Police intelligence failure, plain and simple.

I know there are a number of characters that were circling around here.

One of the central actors was Assistant Chief Pitman, who was apparently your head of intelligence.

She also had two people that you, that were fairly new,

Donahue and Farnham, I think, who were on the intelligence team.

Somehow, somehow the intelligence division didn't tell you what they knew.

What's that story about?

So that's a, uh, that, that, that's a good one.

You look at it and that's why I think we had a number of intelligence, uh, analysts come out as, as

whistleblowers, uh, because I, I'll refer, I referenced it in the book.

There's a number of emails where they're talking about this intelligence that's coming in from the U.

S.

Marshals Service from, from various agencies.

They're pushing it up.

And it's being provided to the, uh, assistant director of my

intelligence, uh, um, division, the director, uh, which is, um.

Donahue and Farnham, and then, uh, even up through, uh, the, uh, Deputy Chief at the time was Gallagher,

he's now an Assistant Chief there, uh, in Pittman, and wasn't even being put in the, the assessments.

That raises a lot of concerns about why that wasn't being handled that way.

Was that, okay, let's just put it out there.

Do you feel that was done purposely or accidentally?

And what's your theory on that?

You know, um, there's, you know, I'm again, I provided all the evidence that I, that I

have, there's a lot of ways of looking at and thinking about it.

It's hard to see the amount of intelligence that they had, uh, and realize that that was not even

being put in the assessments, not even being footnoted, uh, and think that it was just by, by accident.

I can tell you this.

If I was a brand new person as a director, assistant director and

intelligence unit, I I'm going to err on the side of caution.

I'm going to give them more intelligence than, you know, I'm going to make sure it's all in there because this is, this

is my first big event and it's, you know, my, my keister's riding on it,

uh, to think that they were sitting on this month, this amount of intelligence.

Um, And even the FBI still had an amount of intelligence that we didn't have, but still, they provided enough

to my intelligence unit that we could have effectively planned for it.

It would have been the intelligence needed to get the Capitol Police Board

to approve outside resources, bigger fencing, mutual aid, National Guard.

We wouldn't be here.

So, um, it's easy to go down some of those rabbit holes to wonder why would

they go out of their way to prevent the intelligence from being published.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Uh, there's a number of ways of looking at it, but it is concerning that it wasn't included in the assessments.

Well, let me just, uh, kind of, um, finish out this line of

questioning with a, uh, comment that Pittman made in front of Congress.

I believe she was testifying before a committee and I'll quote, let me be clear, USCP should

have been more prepared for this attack by January 4th, USCP.

New, this would not be like other previous protests.

I am here to offer my sincere apologies on behalf of the department.

What, is that all about?

So I think a lot of your viewers are going to know the term CYA.

And they have a lot of CYA right there.

If that's the case, if that's the case that by January 4th, they

knew this was not going to be like any other, any other assessments.

Why did they sit on a call with me with all the partner agencies that

are brought in on a video call on January 5th and didn't say that?

Why were they briefing?

Deputy Chief Gallagher was briefing members of Congress and their staff and the Capitol Police Board as late

as the afternoon of Tuesday, January 5th, that this was going to be just like the two previous rallies.

Yet we're going to go ahead and testify to that later on.

That's CYA and, you know, trying to save her job and trying to become the chief.

So CYA, I want to chime in and say, so CYA cover your ass is a big part of all of this.

And there's also a lot of people clearly that believe that there was more to this than meets the eye.

There's even former police officers that worked at the U.

S.

Capitol Police Department that feel that it was a setup.

Also feel that you were set up by Pittman.

Uh, she clearly undermined you, uh, as far as I'm concerned.

A number of other people and the politics of this is just beyond the scope.

So as time has passed, clearly we've heard more things, more of the truth, more of the facts have come out.

You know, there's some factions that want to compare January 6th to Pearl Harbor, you know, so

it just so much, so much of this is so complicated, but for you.

Finally, you've reached the point where you've been exonerated, which has to be a huge burden off your shoulders.

Oh, it's a huge burden off the shoulders and to be honest with you, I never really expected to see

anything in writing, um, come out with my name on it, uh, from Congress, uh, saying that, that I've been exonerated.

It's, uh, it's interesting before that final, that, um, interim,

uh, final interim report, uh, came out December 17th.

When I last went to testify, I've had people ask me, has anybody ever apologized to you?

And it's, it's interesting.

So I went to testify September, uh, I think it was September 16th, 2023, uh, before the committee on

house administration was one of the last time I publicly testified.

And following the testimony, the chair and vice chair, the chair is Barry Loudermilk, vice chair is Norma Torres,

a Democrat from California, um, who after January 6th had called for me to be arrested and placed in jail.

Uh, because of my, uh, being the chief on January 6th.

Um, Norma Torres actually approached me after my testimony, came up and apologized.

She was, uh, really the one person that's, that's come out and apologized.

So she said, I never realized what you went through before and

during January 6th and the effort she did to, uh, try and save us.

Uh, gave me a challenge coin, invited me to, uh, to lunch.

We haven't had that lunch, but that meant a lot.

So now to see Barry Loudermilk in the committee, uh, so with, you know, uh, Norma Torres being the, uh, vice chair,

Put out that report, and on page one of that report, literally listing me by

name as exonerated really meant a lot, and something I never expected to see.

We've, uh, in a moment we're going to talk about what actually happened on the day of

January 6th, a lot of assault on television, but you obviously had a

different perspective that I think people will find quite interesting.

But let's go back to something you said, which is peculiar to the U.

S.

Capitol Police.

You know, Bill always shares stories about his political frustrations

with his department and all the things he had to deal with.

It pales in comparison to what goes on, uh, with the U S Capitol police.

Um, in many ways you as the chief of police, we're really not in charge of making all the

major decisions about security on January 6th or any other day.

I worked up there for 10 years.

I know exactly.

What you had to deal with.

You have a sergeant at arm in the Senate.

You have a sergeant at arm in the house.

You have the architect of the Capitol.

Uh, and this constitutes the Capitol Police Board.

And those are the people that are really your boss that ultimately make the final decisions.

And, and tell us about why that process really prevented you from

having the National Guard support that you wanted on January six.

That's you're, you're absolutely right.

The political oversight and the political involvement in security on Capitol Hill has got to stop.

Um, the Capitol police board, you have three, I mentioned the three people, uh, House and Senate Sergeant arms,

the architect of the Capitol, all three politically appointed people, all three, uh, catering to their, uh,

whoever put them in, in, in position, uh, to make sure that they're making decisions that'll, that'll please them.

That's, that's a big problem.

Uh, what people need to realize is.

I was the only chief of police in the United States of America, think about this, that has a federal law, 2 U.

S.

1970.

I would encourage your viewers to look it up, but make sure you look it up before December 2021,

because based on my testimony, they've now changed the law.

So, 2 U.

S.

1970 required that I go to those three politically appointed people anytime

I wanted to bring in resources from my men and women on Capitol Police.

Um, so when I went, uh, I was required by law, I wanted the National Guard.

Uh, to support us on the hill.

I didn't even want armed National Guard.

I wanted unarmed National Guard to help augment my officers on the perimeter

just because I know a bike rack with nobody standing behind it is no good.

You need to have whether it's National Guard police officers stationed every couple of distance to keep

people from, you know, even wanting to try and jump over the bike rack.

So January 3rd, you know, looking at it, a number of people are coming downtown.

I've done a number of big events.

I just.

Didn't have the comfort level.

I would have liked for the perimeter.

Uh, so that's what that's what required me by law to go to the Capitol police board and request the,

the use of the National Guard, um, for, uh, to support my perimeter.

And I did that the morning of January 3rd, people need to realize January 3rd was a Sunday.

Well, why were you working on a Sunday?

It was the 1st day of the 117th Congress, regardless of what it is January 3rd that, um, uh, yeah.

New Congress, we just, uh, uh, swore in a new Congress now, uh, but it was a new Congress.

I went and I saw the sergeant arms nine twenty four in the morning.

I still remember because I've looked it up and I pulled my video transcripts, uh, went into see Paul

Irving and request the National Guard because I'm required by law.

Uh, and he didn't, he wouldn't approve it because he was

concerned about the optics of the National Guard on Capitol Hill.

And you're likely to hear that term optics come up a little bit more.

Um.

You know, knowing that, you know, Paul Irving, again, you know, House and Senate Sergeant at Arms, their title

is Chief Law Enforcement Official for the House, and Chief Law Enforcement Official for, uh, the Senate.

So when you think of the, the Chief, and you think of a Security Premier, you think the Chief's at the top of it.

Not really.

I've got two Two additional chiefs that were top of me.

Um, but needless to say, Paul wouldn't approve it.

I then went over to see Mike Stinger, who was the chairman of the Capitol Police Board, uh, to request, um,

the National Guard went over to see him right after I left Paul's office.

He wasn't in yet, went back at 11 53 AM because again, I've got all my records, uh, went in to ask him.

And again, he wouldn't approve it as well.

Uh, and later on, I found out that Paul Irving hadn't called him and told him I

was coming that, um, they were concerned that Speaker Pelosi wouldn't go for it.

That really hampered your efforts to protect the Capitol.

Yes, it did.

Besides the fact that they didn't think she would

want to approve that, she, in fact, did not want to do that.

Ultimately, they Where her political lackeys, if you want to, for, you

know, for a better description, but she called the shots.

That that is correct.

She, uh, she, she wields a lot of, uh, a lot of power on Capitol Hill.

She's actually the, probably the most powerful member of Congress,

uh, at the time was probably the most powerful member of Congress.

Speaker of the house wields a, uh, extremely amount of,

uh, power and what people need to realize is think about it.

So I'm denied twice in advance of January six.

Come, come January six, you know, when the, uh, um, uh, riot began to occur on the west front of the

Capitol at 1253, you know, made a call to my partner agency, DC police, uh, and we can talk about that.

I'd actually reach out to DC police at 10 59 that morning and ask them if they

could stage resources nearby in case we needed them, which they did, um.

Reached out to Jeff Carroll with the D.

C.

Police, he immediately was sending in those resources.

And then at 12.

58 I made my first call to the Capitol Police Board, the two sergeant at arms, requesting permission to bring

in those resources that by law I have to ask permission to bring in.

Think about it.

It would take 71 minutes.

11 repeated calls to them before I finally got approval.

So, you know, anybody that thinks, well, why, why would they deny it on, on the third, when you

ask it in advance, why would they deny it while we're under attack?

The attack was occurring right at Stinger's window, right outside his window.

And I still, it took 71 minutes.

Repeated calls for them to finally approve my request to bring in resources.

What is the, uh, Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm just going to say..

The question I had, uh, since we started Citizens Behind the Badge based on we got

to stop this defund and defame the police movement, right?

It was impacting public safety across the country.

I'm just wondering how much did the defund movement, uh, affect,

uh, your lack of resources, uh, and personnel on January 6th?

So that's, that's interesting.

I think you're so far the only person I've actually talked to yet that have asked that question.

We were facing a 26 million budget cut because Congress, and I think I heard the term was, well, we can't

demand these other people, agencies, cut their budget when our own police department's not facing a budget cut.

So I was facing a 26 million budget cut.

It hadn't been enacted yet, but I was facing it because

we were right in the middle of the defund the police movement.

What happened with me And again, when you mentioned, I became the Assistant Chief of Operations in 2017, when I very

first came in, I immediately started doing an assessment of what equipment, what training do my officers get, and

I found that not, like, like DC police, every officer, as soon as you get out of the academy, you get a riot baton,

you get a helmet, and you get an APR, air purifying respirator, um, you may not be trained to the level one civil

disturbance unit training everyone else, you know, the specialized units get, or the, uh, the civil disturbance

unit gets, But at least you're going to have that basic, uh, protection.

So, immediately coming in, I said, you know, hey, we need to make sure our officers have this.

Um, you may not realize this, Capital Police, only police department in the country that has

been subjected to two biological attacks at, um, Anthrax and Ricin.

And you know, not every one of their officers is issued an APR.

So, needless to say, 2017, I come in, uh, make these, uh, decisions.

Say, hey, I want a helmet.

Right.

But on APR for every officer on the police department, it wouldn't

be until October of 2020 that I'd finally get a budget approval.

And my CFO found money just to get helmets.

That's how long that takes.

Very sad.

Crazy.

So the interesting thing, uh, just since we're on this topic and to kind of further that discussion

is I believe when you were the chief at the time, Steve, your

budget for the police department was somewhere around 300 million.

Then we go through the whole defund the police thing, and I understand that

currently now, today, the budget is up to somewhere around a billion dollars.

What do you think about that?

So, my budget, um, again, I'm a numbers guy.

I try to be very, very specific.

It was 463 million dollars.

Um, And there's a, there's a term you often hear, uh, up on,

up on Capitol Hill, never let a, um, disaster go to waste.

Um, the budget right now, I think when I had last budget cycle, I think we're right around 752 million.

So, um, your viewers may not realize that Capitol Police is

about the 25th largest police department in the country.

And at the time I had probably about the 12th largest police department.

I'm sorry, I had about the 12th largest budget.

They're still about the 25th largest police department, and they have about the 6th largest

budget of any police department in the United States of America.

That is a huge budget.

And it's interesting that you just talked about the red tape and the difficulty just

to get helmets, equipment that was necessary for your officers.

But yet you've got all this, this, the department has all this money.

And clearly you're not there now.

And, and I think that there's something in Congress now where they're talking

about increasing the budget all the way up to a billion dollars.

I had something that I just read recently and, um, I just find it a

bit ironic and you had alluded to it just a minute ago about the fact that.

They have made that statement to you like, well, how can we not defund the police department here when we're

talking about everybody else defunding and the whole political landscape

of that whole situation had to be enormously frustrating, I'm sure.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, you, you want your officers to have the best equipment.

You want them to have the best training.

Um, but it is, it's, it's, there's, there's just such a demand for the, for the officers up there because,

you know, the, the members of Congress want certain doors open.

They want access.

They want people to have, You know, be able to get in, you know, unfettered access into their constituents.

Uh, and it's expensive.

It's expensive to, you know, each door open each hour, each, uh, each day it gets, it starts

building up, uh, and making demands on the, uh, on the budget.

So as the chief, it'd be nice if they just let you focus.

I mean, I came in at the time, 25 plus years of law enforcement.

Uh, it'd be nice if they'd let me do my, do my job and get the equipment I needed and, and focus on

that rather than, um, people just, you know, having ease of access.

Um, but I think now they're looking at it.

They're looking at the, the threats again, January six, you had the

threats, you know, skyrocket against members of Congress.

Uh, and I think they're looking at trying to increase budget to, uh, address some of that issue.

Uh, I got one follow up question, um, on all of this, uh, particularly the Capitol police board.

I think you also had oversight committees too, right?

You had several in the Senate and several in the house that were also involved in the mix from time to time.

That is correct.

I had four oversight committees, two on the House side, two on the Senate side, uh, and it, it wasn't unusual,

especially during the, the George Floyd, um, protests that we'd be,

you know, gearing up for protests coming up to the, uh, uh, Capitol.

I'd have, you know, I'd be putting up fencing, I'd be putting out my officers in riot gear.

That I'd get calls from my oversight committees, um, demanding that my officers not be out in riot gear,

that they're concerned with the look, uh, and things like that.

And I'd, I'd explain exactly why they're there and stuff like that.

And ultimately I'd have to have the, the riot gear placed right near them.

Because the Capitol Police Board would be like, yeah, no, we need to, uh, need to back this back a little.

Even while we were dealing with the, uh, Supreme Court Justice, uh, nominations.

And, and think about this.

This is how law enforcement is manipulated.

You know, we had, you regularly, uh, fence off the East Front of the Capitol, which is, you know,

between the Capitol and the Supreme Court or the Library of Congress.

Uh, because a lot of members of Congress would come up and park

on that, uh, hardscape on the East Front and then go in and vote.

Um, they would want, you know, No fencing to be put up so, uh, demonstrators could actually interact

with members of Congress to put influence on them, put pressure on them to vote against whether

it's Kavanaugh, whether it's, um, and any of the other, uh, Supreme Court justices and think about it.

They even fought to keep access into the buildings open and you had, um.

The one protester, I think it was Senator Flake, in the elevator put a lot of pressure on the Senator,

and by the time the vote came up for the Supreme Court Justice, they actually were able to delay it because

he pushed for the FBI to look into the allegations of sexual assault.

Uh, and, and so they, they actually succeeded.

So you see that and it's just, again, it's just politicizing security and there really is no, no place for it.

You know, let the, let the officers do their job, uh, and give it as secure environment as you can.

So today, as we sit here today, years later, Has anything changed?

Is it still run by the Capitol Police Board?

And are there still the political implications that you just spoke about?

So, has anything changed?

So, December 2021, uh, President Biden changed, uh, signed a, into a law, uh, a change of 2 U.

S.

1970.

It's the, uh, United States Capitol Police, I think it's called the Emergency, uh, Authorization Act

or Emergency Assistance Act, that now allows the Chief of Police To

request assistance, uh, without going through the capital police board.

So if you think I was wrong, why did they change the law?

Um, so that they changed that with the amount of budget.

I think capital piece have gotten a couple of key things have have happened.

They've bought equipment for all the officers.

They now need to train to that.

So they're they're doing a lot more training.

Their city use doing a lot more training with partner agencies, which is which is good.

Their intelligence unit.

The people that you had mentioned, um, are are not involved in intelligence anymore.

The assistant director, the director.

Uh, both gone, uh, replaced.

They brought in another person, uh, down, I think from NYPD.

That seems to be doing a good job.

When I talked to some of the analysts now, uh, information's being, uh, captured, being shared, uh, effectively.

So I think that's a big key.

Um, but again, with intelligence is you don't know what you don't know.

So if there is something that is being kept from the chief.

You know, it's hard for him to know it.

Um, so that is kind of tough, but I think they're doing better with their intelligence sharing.

I think they're doing much better with their, um, working with their partner agencies, which is, which is key.

Every agency out there.

You hope you have a good mutual aid program.

I hope you practice it.

Um, so I think those are the key things that have that have changed.

It's still a wide open campus and it's, it's hard to protect a wide open campus, but that's, that's not gonna change.

Join us next week as we continue our conversation with Chief Stephen Sund.

Next week, we'll hear his minute by minute account of January 6th.

I'm Dennis Collins, and we'll see you next time on Heroes Behind the Badge.