Posted on 05/19/2023 10:56:09 AM PDT by Twotone
The Capitol Police couldn’t even defend their own building, nor could they defend Pelosi’s San Francisco home from an illegal alien hammer man, but somehow, they have now established national offices to monitor U.S. citizens outside their jurisdiction? Now they want more money and authority. Are you kidding me?
This week, House Republicans crafted the annual appropriations bill funding the legislative branch of government, typically the smallest and least controversial of the 12 annual spending bills. However, in that bill they plan to provide $780.9 million to the U.S. Capitol police, which is $46.3 million more than enacted fiscal year 2023 levels, which were already a whopping 22% increase over fiscal year 2022.
Furthermore, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger has asked Congress to boost the number of field offices his agency has outside the Capitol. Citing increased violence both in Washington and in other parts of the country, Manger wants more personnel to operate outside the agency’s home base in five or six offices in the Northeast, Midwest, and the South. One has to wonder why Democrats suddenly want to massively grow the size and scope of one particular police department as they seek to hamstring every other one around the nation.
In reality, both parties have bought into this culture of leniency on street crime, which is largely what threatens members of Congress in and around the Capitol. But now they have the nerve to complain about the policies they helped create by conflating this ubiquitous and universal violence with particularized threats toward members of Congress that somehow engender a need for a legislative junta that will operate around the country. Except this idea is not coming from a good place and is headed down a slippery slope of creating yet another federal police department with the opportunity to treat political opponents as threats to government officials so they can track, surveil, and even arrest them around the country.
In July 2021, the U.S. Capitol Police opened regional offices in Tampa, Florida, and California to supposedly investigate threats to members of Congress. This was a dangerous power grab given that we have state and local law enforcement, Secret Service, Homeland Security, and of course the FBI. It was born out of misinformation about the nature of what did and did not occur on Jan. 6. Rather than investigating the bad behavior of both federal officials and Capitol Police on that day, officials are continuing to perpetuate this lie that somehow there is a nationwide insurrection plot against members of Congress.
Nearly two years later, there is no transparency as to what sort of intel these field offices are gathering on U.S. citizens. However, given that FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend has divulged that the FBI is randomly investigating conservatives who had nothing to do with criminal activity on Jan. 6, it is a valid assumption that the USCP are likely engaging in the same surveillance and intelligence-gathering on U.S. citizens as the FBI.
This is an extremely dangerous precedent because, unlike the DHS and the FBI, the USCP are not allowed to conduct intelligence activities and operations on anyone, much less U.S. citizens. Nothing allows the USCP to bypass directives concerning information collection against U.S. citizens, nor are they designated as part of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
What’s worse is that they are not part of the executive branch of government, which violates the principle that the police powers be reserved only to the executive. Capitol Police are not subject to normal transparency rules, such as open records requests or disclosure of specific arrests made. It’s one thing to run security at the Capitol; it’s quite another to set up shop around America and serve as a legislative Stasi with carte blanche authority to investigate and possibly surveil American citizens hundreds of miles away from the Capitol. As such, their activities likely violate the Intelligence Oversight Act. Then again, all legal norms have been thrown out the window in response to January 6.
In 2021, Florida Rep. Greg Steube introduced legislation clarifying the statutes governing the operations of the USCP to stipulate that they can only deploy for 30 days and that it must be in response to a direct imminent threat. Thus, they’d be prohibited from establishing a base of operations outside D.C.
It’s just crazy allowing the Capitol police to have “field offices” to monitor citizens. These people keep pushing for more and more Orwellian measures. Something tells me things will be coming to a head before long. The Left is drunk with power and is using government agencies to screw over their political enemies.
They’re trying to turn America into nazi Germany!
WHERE are these field offices? Addresses please.
This is almost as bad as the Chinese Secret Police having field offices in the US. No, it just as bad.
The way things are going it might be worse than Nazi Germany because of all the new technology at their disposal. It really is becoming like something out of Orwell’s novel.
Pelosi's present and future homes. She's entitled. She needs someone to guard her taxpayer provided liquor stash.
... although, Pelosi's Florida house is 3 hours away from Tampa ... maybe the Capitol Police need to keep an eye on that ungovernable Amish crowd in Sarasota.
They are purely a legislative creature who have no real jurisdiction outside of the District of Columbia.
US Marshals should exclusively have the body job at the moment a member steps outside the DC limits.
Biden already appointed a new Director of US Marshals Service. Biden might not have a clue what they do, but his puppetmasters do.
Better would be to state that Capitol Police only have authority in DC, and are private citizens with no powers outside DC.
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