Capitol Police watchdog reports emerge into public view, but slowly

As advocates continue to press for more transparency from the Capitol Police, the agency can point to at least one recent change. Reports from its watchdog are slowly being released to the public, including a new batch out last month.

Such reports were mostly kept under wraps until a year ago. Now 38 of them are available on the website of the Capitol Police Office of Inspector General, which conducts audits, inspections and investigations of the force.

It’s an improvement but still a drop in the bucket, advocates say, citing a lingering culture of secrecy. More than a hundred reports have yet to be released.

“Certainly the system is not set up in a way that lends itself to transparency or accountability,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight.

Charged with protecting Congress, the Capitol Police has an annual budget approaching $800 million and has been plagued by recurring problems, such as staffing shortages and discrimination complaints. Even as they move to release some reports, the police department or its governing board could squelch unflattering information in the name of safety and security, Williams and others fear.

David T. Harper, who has served as Capitol Police inspector general since February, said the final say on what his office can release belongs not to him, but to the Capitol Police Board.

“We are involved in the very first step,” he said in an interview this summer. “We review reports for what we believe is information that needs to be redacted and then we send that off to the Capitol Police. And that is our role. We don’t see those reports again until they’re posted.”

Harper declined to say whether he has concerns about his office’s level of independence. Members of the Capitol Police Board did not respond to requests for comment.

But union head Gus Papathanasiou, who leads the Capitol Police Labor Committee, said he believes the inspector general needs more autonomy.

“In order to have true transparency within the organization, you need a separate entity investigating the department,” Papathanasiou said. “And we really don’t have that within this agency.”

Nonbinding language

While many inspectors general across the federal government are required by law to promptly release their reports online, that’s not explicitly the case for the Capitol Police watchdog.

“Most other IGs have a statutory requirement to post reports online, and that gives them more independence from their head of agency,” Williams said. “That’s really critical for oversight.”

As far back as 2020 — as broader calls for police accountability were sweeping the nation after the murder of George Floyd — appropriators included language in Legislative Branch spending bill reports directing the Capitol Police watchdog to explore whether its reports could be made public. Lawmakers in more recent bill reports have said they are “encouraged” by progress so far and have directed the inspector general to “expedite the process.” But those directives are not legally binding.

Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican who left the House after the 117th Congress, introduced legislation in 2020 that sought to boost transparency. It would have added an explicit requirement to make Capitol Police inspector general reports available to the public, while leaving room to redact sensitive security information. That proposal was never enacted.

Davis said in a recent interview that there was “no bigger supporter of the Capitol Police” than him. “I always had their back. But I also wanted more transparency within their operation,” he said.

House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, who succeeded Davis as the top Republican on the committee, said at an oversight hearing last summer, “I’ve been concerned that the OIG lacks that independence necessary to properly do its job.”

He struck a more optimistic note in a statement this August. “I’ve been pleased to see the USCP OIG release more reports,” he said. “However, more accountability and transparency is still needed. I plan to ask the OIG and Capitol Police Board about the timeline and progress of additional reports at the next USCP stakeholder forum in September.”

Redact and release

For advocates like Williams, the crux of the issue is the Capitol Police Board’s role in deciding what sees the light of day.

“Typically agencies have an opportunity to respond to IG reports, and that’s fine. You want them to comment and respond. … So there are ways they could still weigh in. But it’s very different from the board deciding whether something gets published,” Williams said.

Those decisions take time, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson told lawmakers last year.

“The IG first reviews a report and proposes any redactions to the report, and then sends it to USCP for operational review. Following USCP’s review, the report is sent to the Board’s working group,” she wrote after a joint oversight hearing. Staff then further parse reports for any additional redactions, before sending it to members of the board for a final vote of approval, she wrote.

“We have directed our staff to work through the backlog to expedite release; however, we will not shortchange the essential security review,” she added.

Gibson is one of three voting members of the Capitol Police Board, alongside House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland and Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin. The fourth member is Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger, who serves in a nonvoting role.

Among its other tasks, the board is responsible for appointing the Capitol Police inspector general, in consultation with other legislative branch watchdogs.

While critics knock the board for erring on the side of secrecy, it has wide-ranging statutory authority to withhold “security information” from the public. The public release of inspector general reports over the past year may be slow, but it represents a dramatic reversal from previous internal policy, which was described in a recent court filing.

“In late 2017, the Capitol Police Board designated all of the Inspector General’s ‘audit reports, investigation reports, analyses, reviews, evaluations, (and) annual work plans’ as ‘security information,’” U.S. Circuit Judge Robert L. Wilkins noted in a May opinion.

The appeals court ruled against journalist Jason Leopold in that case. He had sued to gain access to records relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

A fine line

The new trend of releasing reports is important, advocates say, because it promises a glimpse inside an agency that has struggled to reinvent itself after Jan. 6, 2021.

After a mob breached the Capitol’s defenses that day, exposing planning and leadership flaws, top security officials resigned, including the police chief at the time. The inspector general produced a series of flash reports making more than 100 recommendations.

Some of that work was quickly visible to the public, thanks in part to the House Administration Committee, which released executive summaries of the flash reports. But much of it is still not available on the website of the Capitol Police Office of the Inspector General.

Many of the 38 reports posted there as of Monday morning are relatively mundane. For example, one is a management letter that outlines a few minor control problems discovered in the course of a financial audit. Of $545,000 spent by the department on a contract for firearms and use-of-force simulator training systems, $442,000 “represents a waste of government funds,” the letter says. As of November 2023, only two of the four simulators were in place.

While the letter alludes to other, larger deficiencies identified in the audit, that fuller document has yet to be released. Members of the Capitol Police Board did not respond to an emailed request to provide it.

The latest batch of approved reports quietly appeared on the website in August, including the inspector general’s annual performance plan for fiscal 2024 and an audit of the Capitol Police Memorial Fund from 2017.

It’s not clear how many others will follow and when. Gibson told lawmakers last year she knew of “approximately 160” reports created since the inception of the watchdog in 2005. Previous inspector general Ron Russo testified that the total was about 650, though Harper believes he misspoke. The total is a little more than 200, Harper said.

So far, none appear on Oversight.gov, the hub that hosts reports from most of the federal government’s more than 70 inspectors general, including those of legislative branch agencies like the Architect of the Capitol and the Library of Congress.

Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute and a longtime advocate for greater transparency from the Capitol Police, said that withholding reports in the name of security could actually have the opposite effect.

“Because they’re not being transparent, that’s making things less safe, because you can’t see the problems that the Capitol Police are refusing to fix,” Schuman said.

It’s a fine line to walk, said Harper, who previously served as inspector general for Florida’s Department of Financial Services and for the city of Albuquerque, N.M.

“There is stuff that appropriately needs to be redacted and I am 100% in support of that. Absolutely,” Harper said. “But as an IG, where you can make things public, that’s helpful for instilling confidence.”

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