Chief of US Capitol Police to resign - reports

The chief of police responsible for defending the US Capitol will resign, local media reported on Thursday (January 7).

A day after his force came under heavy criticism for failing to hold back an angry mob of Trump supporters, who stormed the heart of government on Wednesday and wreaked havoc as lawmakers hid inside.

Late on Thursday, police said one officer who confronted the mob had died of his injuries, bringing the death toll from the attack to five.

The rioters had been trying to disrupt the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

News of Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund's decision to resign came just hours after the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for him to go.

But she didn't stop there:

"It goes to the FBI, what was the shortcoming in their intelligence provided. It goes to many other elements and we have to have a full review."

Wednesday's events were preceded by weeks of online threats that the protests could descend into violence.

Many who traveled to the capital shared plans using websites such as Parler, a Twitter-like service that has attracted right-wing extremist groups. Some users discussed ways to illegally sneak guns into Washington.

Starting from January 1, there were nearly 15-hundred posts on Twitter from accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that mentioned the rally and contained references to violence, according to a former intelligence official who monitors extremists on social media.

These included posts urging so-called "Patriots" to "Rise Up."

Despite those rumblings of danger, the Capitol Police force did not request advance help from other federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, to secure the building, according to one senior official.

And National Guard reinforcements, summoned by the city's mayor, were not mobilized until more than an hour after protesters had first breached the barricades.

In stark contrast, those agencies were aggressively deployed by the Trump administration during last summer's protests against police brutality in Washington and across the U.S.