Lapses spark debate on deadly force

Nearly a year before a man was tackled by the Secret Service after entering the White House, Capitol Police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman following a frantic car chase.

In both cases, the actions of law enforcement prompted questions about whether the people hired to protect the nation’s top politicians used too much or too little force, highlighting the difficult decisions police face in a world where the fear of terrorism is acute.

{mosads}Those questions were on full display Tuesday, as lawmakers openly disagreed over how officials should balance the imperative to protect high-ranking government officials with the fear of using excessive firepower.

The family of Miriam Carey has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Capitol Police for her shooting last October, which came at the end of a car chase from the White House to the Capitol. Critics have argued that police should have held their fire given the possibility of causing injury or death to bystanders or to Carey’s 14-month-old daughter, who was in the backseat.

But the Justice Department decided against filing charges, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told The Hill that Capitol Police handled the situation correctly. Moreover, he said the Secret Service should have done the same thing to the Sept. 19 White House fence-jumper, identified by authorities as Omar Gonzalez, when he made for the building itself.

“The message has got to be clear to the agents — nobody ever gets through. Ever,” Chaffetz said. “And if they have to take the most dramatic steps to do that, I got their back.”

At Tuesday’s hearing at the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) questioned whether the Secret Service was too slow to act. Reports have described Gonzalez as an Iraq War veteran with a history of mental illness.

“Have they been told to exercise restraint in these measures, or have they been told to exercise protection?” he said.

Lawmakers are rarely shy about expressing opinions on the use of force in an international context.

Yet while members from both parties blasted the Secret Service for ignoring its own procedures, some were extremely wary of pushing officers to be more aggressive. Instead, members insisted that they couldn’t tell law enforcement how to handle the sort of instantaneous, potentially lethal, decisions that the Capitol Police and the Secret Service face on a regular basis.

“These are split-second decisions, and law enforcement always faces that dilemma — damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said after the hearing.

Connolly also accused Chaffetz of grandstanding, calling it “the ultimate in congressional hubris” for lawmakers to be advising the Secret Service on what should be in their security protocols.

“Can you imagine if that’s the real policy? If some mentally ill person climbs the fence, or some tourist who doesn’t know the rules — we’re going to shoot them dead,” he said. “Really?”

Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) paused to choose his words carefully before saying, “I’m not in the business of what the Secret Service agents do.

“I don’t think I would fault the Secret Service if they had shot him,” Cartwright added. “But I don’t fault them either for preserving his life.”

Members from both sides of the aisle appeared more comfortable making a nuanced argument. Several suggested that reducing the whole issue to the question of “shoot or don’t shoot” glossed over the mistakes that the Secret Service made in allowing the suspect to get into the White House.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) noted that the Secret Service failed to release dogs guarding the property, and that the fence-jumper had made it through several other rings of security to make it deep into the White House.

“I think we always want to show restraint, but at the same time you need to show discipline,” Meadows said.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson repeatedly emphasized that her agents are authorized to take lethal action, but only when an individual poses an “imminent danger.”

Defining when and how that critical line had been crossed, however, would inevitably involve “independent decisions made by the officers based on the totality of the circumstances,” she said.

Ralph Basham, the Secret Service director under former President George W. Bush, openly expressed his discomfort Tuesday with pushing agents to employ deadly force more readily.

“We could easily be sitting here today discussing why an Iraq veteran, possibly suffering through post-traumatic stress disorder, armed only with a pocket knife, was shot dead on the North Lawn when the president and first family were not on the property,” he told the panel.

But Pierson also admitted the Secret Service failed by making it possible for someone to enter the White House unimpeded. The service only put automatic locks on the White House’s front door after the Sept. 19 incident, she said Tuesday.

The issues under debate Tuesday were just as prevalent a year ago, when Carey was killed.

On Oct. 3 last year, lawmakers gave the Capitol Police a standing ovation on the House floor hours after Carey died. Other details — that Carey had no weapons, was driving with her daughter and had postpartum depression, according to her family — only came later.

Nine months after the shooting, the Justice Department announced it had concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue charges against any Capitol police officers involved.

The investigation found that Carey drove recklessly and rapidly around Washington landmarks and ignored repeated orders from both the Secret Service and Capitol Police. Officers fired on Carey after she reversed her vehicle and drove toward Capitol officers, according to the report.

While the actions of those officers came under scrutiny, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) noted Tuesday that in 1998, two Capitol Police officers were killed when a man entered the Capitol and opened fire before being killed by police himself. That history continues to inform similar split-second decisions today, he argued.

“Some praised their quick responses [in 2013,] others questioned their actions, but they acted based on their first-hand experiences,” he said.