The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Lessons from the January 2021 Capitol Chaos | PPP Bonus

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

In this bonus episode I’ll share my observations as a former Planning Section Chief on the January 2021 U.S. Capitol Chaos.

On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was overrun. As a result of the actions by some on that day, six Americans are now dead. In today's world, in today's America in particular, public safety agencies and incident management teams supporting planning processes must consider all possibilities for special events to go sideways. On this bonus episode I'll share my observations as a former planning section chief on an incident management team that helps support local through national level events on how IMTs and public safety agencies can take lessons learned from that tragic day and apply them to planning processes for the future. Thank you all for sticking with this episode. I'm going to give my from afar observations of you know the kind of three up three three down, after action report, improvement plan style.

We'll all go over areas for improvement that I saw and some strengths. And the media is not talking about any of the strengths, and a lot of other people aren't talking about any of the strengths, and I'm not getting into your politics or what you think or who's responsible. The law and the government and folks will figure that out, and they're figuring it out now. Who I'm really speaking to are the folks who are going to today and in the future going to have to keep planning for events like this and keep being ready and keep staying shoulder to shoulder

and arm in arm with their brothers and sisters in public safety who are charged with protecting each other and other people. That's who I really want to focus on and hopefully help. The first area for improvement that I saw was physical barriers, right? It looked like it was pretty easy to get past things. There are many different physical barriers in the security world, both some short-term ones, some long-term ones. But if we're going through,

and that's the key, right? That's behind the doors that we don't truly know other than some letters that have popped up on the news is what was the planning process like? Was it a process that was done together between local state or district and federal agencies? I have my assumptions, but I don't know. But it has to be, right? It has to be to do that. So as part of that planning process and a good planning process, looking at your structures at your facilities includes what are the physical barriers we can have? Because we know there's a whole bunch of people out there. And so what if they decide to turn their attention this way? How do we stop them? How do we slow them? And the short-term ones that you can bring

in, just like when they do construction on highways, they bring in Jersey barriers. Those help stop vehicles. They could do the same thing in front of key buildings. What about long-term barriers? Are there, in many facilities and hospitals and other things, there's fire doors that shut or other doors that shut security doors. Maybe we have those on the windows and the doors, right? Maybe we consider that. Maybe we add temporary ones. But the logistics section working, you know, with operations and the incident commander of a combined planning process could think about those kind of things.

So, again, we're focused on the Capitol because it just happened. It's fresh and it's raw in all of our minds. But think about what else is going on. We're doing mass vaccinations. We're doing testing. Are we considering barriers and things? Because people are also not just wound up about the election. They're wound up about COVID, right? And getting their shot and their tests. So focus on the capital, but consider that for all your events that you plan for. What are the physical barriers that keep people and vehicles out of here? Staffing. Secondary for improvement that I see, you can only put so much on a small group of people in front of thousands of people and expect them to actually be able to do that,

right? Between folks on the outside or folks on the inside, internal, external, it just seems like you need more people, right? And that comes from a good planning process where you talk about, we've got this going on, here's the size of this building, here's what one person can cover that area or something like that. But think about in operations when you're doing that tactics meeting, right, that planning is facilitating. How many people do we really need? And then that's what you have to ask for and staff for. So we saw as events unfolded, police came in from the states and districts and localities around and the National Guard. Sometimes it's good to have that conversation ahead of time, right? Instead of when you have to

make a Hail Mary call and say, we need help now. What if they were on another assignment and they couldn't come in there? So physical barriers, increased staffing, and a big one that of course the news is talking about and that you wonder, that I wonder, is how much did we know that this was going to happen? That information and intelligence processing, that section, right, of ICS. Are we regulatory monitoring social media and are we vetting the information? Are we sharing that with the rest of our team? If we heard some chatter from this group, did we share that with operations who needs to know so their people can have all the right gear and equipment and logistics can have

that equipment ready and all the medical unit can be ready to take care of our own people? As you can see, it's a cycle, right? It's all connected. Good planning process connect the key points, the critical points that can save lives just through conversations. And to me from outside, and again, it's outside. So who knows if these conversations did or didn't happen? This is just my two cents as a former plans chief that usually helped facilitate processes like this to plan for events like this. I was just looking at, looks like we could have stopped people better. It looks like we could have had more people. And did we action the intelligence that helped our planning that could have affected those first two things I just said? So whether you're at the Capitol,

looking at future events or the Capitol of your area or a key facility or planning for other events, maybe consider these things. They're pretty generic. You can get into the details of it with the people that you plan with. Hopefully, you're planning across all sectors, right? How do you stop people in cars? How do we have enough people to do whatever jobs we need to do? In this case, security, response, include medical. And how are we gathering, vetting, discussing information and sharing that with our partners in a timely manner? So in the

midst of all that happened, the people that died that were hurt that, gosh, the controversy now seems even worse. What strengths came out of this? What were what strengths that I see as an observer as an American as you know, someone that wore the different hats that I wore. Well, I thought of two, and there's probably more, and not just the individual efforts of folks, but overall, right, from a process, from an organizational look. The first thing that I saw that I thought of was the evacuation of staff. Secret Service, police, others put themselves in harm's way and got people out of

harm's way. So there had to have been some sort of contingency planning. They clearly had evacuation routes, right? They clearly had fallback areas they could secure. And the fact they had staged masks under the seats in case of attacks or fire or something, there was planning there. So let's give that credit because out of horrible things, there are strengths, but they got their people out of there. And the second strength, which to me is by far the most important strength, are the boots on the ground. Those operations people who I have always and will always say are the most important people in any incident command structure.

The people out there doing the work that you should be talking together for, that you should have all the contingency plans for, the medical ready to respond, the food, the equipment. That's who we look after. The Capitol Police is getting hammered. How much of that is warranted and how much is not, I don't know, that's not up to me. But what I'll say is this, I saw some of them being chased

and squished against the doors and attacked and sprayed, and they showed up to do work to protect others. When there's 10 of you, and then there's 10,000 in front of you, this isn't a movie. It's not 300. You can immediately get overwhelmed and that's what happened. They were chased. They held until they couldn't. The other boots on the ground that I think is a strength are all the people that came in. They didn't ask what political party they were part of. They didn't look to see what race they were on whether they're going to work together or not. The surrounding police, the surrounding police, the state police, the National Guard, they came in and helped each other and protected a symbol of the United States and the government.

The boots on the ground that did the work they did, to me, are the greatest strength that came out of that horrible day. We are in trying times for many reasons. Last summer, we lost 19 Americans, kind of directly from the protests and the riots that resulted in those. More people died from other crimes. This week, we lost six more. Our nation's healing will not be easy.

It will not be swift or smooth. Similarly, planning for special events in the days and months and years to come will prove difficult and threat levels will most likely remain high. Agencies having jurisdiction must insist on combined planning and resource coordination to help save lives. Stay safe out there, everyone. Please wash your hands. And Godspeed.