The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was enough to convince Tom Manger, a happily retired Washington D.C.-area police chief, to come back to his career in law enforcement.
“I remember just standing there, and I was screaming at the TV,” he said of his experience watching the mayhem unfold ahead of Congress certifying Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. “I was riveted for the next three or four hours watching this, and I was alternately in tears. I was angry. I was thinking, ‘How could this happen?’"
Manger said in the aftermath of the attack, he received a phone call recruiting him to lead the United States Capitol Police as chief.
When the person on the other end of the call said, “Your country needs you,” Manger recalled, “I couldn’t say no.”
In July 2021, he took the reins of what he called a “woefully understaffed” agency.
Since the Capitol attacks in 2021, the agency said it has added more than 250 sworn officers in addition to intelligence analysts and contractors who help deal with a growing number of political threats.
“We stood up an intelligence bureau ... We got new equipment. We’ve got better training and better operational planning,” said Manger. “Every day there’s protests around here. Every day there’s things that happen that might be unexpected, and we have to have a plan.”
Manger said his agency is prepared for whatever may come following this year’s election.
“I’m confident that we’re going to be able to protect the Capitol and all of what will go on here over the next few months,” he told Scripps News.
Increasing caseload
Manger said the caseload for his officers has increased dramatically in recent years. He said the threats in recent years are “as bad as it’s ever been.”
“Just seven, eight years ago, if we had over [one] thousand cases, we thought that was a lot,” he told Scripps News.
Threat assessment cases handled by the U.S. Capitol Police include a variety of threats affecting the Capitol itself, as well as members of Congress. According to threat assessment numbers provided by the United States Capitol Police, the caseload grew from approximately 5,206 investigations in 2018 to 9,625 cases involving concerning statements or direct threats following the attack in 2021.
Manger attributed some of the increasing threats to social media.
“It’s never been so easy to put your opinion out there and have it go all over the place,” he said. “It’s never been so easy to contact someone. Fifty years ago, you’d either have to go to somebody’s office to threaten them or, you know, send them a letter through the post office ... Now there’s any number of ways that you can get a threat out to the public and get a threat to an individual.”
Manger said the current threat environment involving threats against government officials is “heightened.” Last year, an Alaska man threatened to “cut the flesh off” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s body and “wear [her] skin like clothes.” According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the suspect, Arther Graham, pleaded guilty in federal court and is awaiting sentencing.
In another case, federal prosecutors filed charges against a man, Roderick Whitt, for threatening to “hunt down Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy” (the former Republican Speaker of the House) and “kill them.”
Whitt pleaded not guilty, but in court documents, prosecutors accused him of leaving a 44-second voicemail for the Capitol Police in which they accused him of threatening to kill both men.
Prosecutors said he referred to himself as, “your worst [expletive] nightmare,” in the message.
“It’s like there’s no guardrails anymore,” said Manger. “People say and do the most outrageous things, and it’s just accepted. People aren’t shunned anymore for saying some of the things that they say now, and so all of that, I think, contributes to the current environment that we’re in.”
Manger said he often thinks about whether bad actors might slip through the cracks.
“We have put protocols in place to minimize that risk,” he said. Every time a case comes in, he said, it is evaluated and prioritized based on immediacy and how specific the threat may be.
Manger said he is looking forward to a peaceful transfer of power following the 2024 Presidential election.
After that, he said with a smile, he may consider retiring – again.
“I love these people. I love this job,” he said. “But I would like to retire, you know?
