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Former Illinois congressman calls for reform of the Capitol Police Board

'The January 6 Commission did not ask the right questions,' former Rep. Rodney Davis said.

Published: February 8, 2023 6:09pm

Updated: February 8, 2023 8:40pm

Former GOP Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis called for reform in the structure of the Capitol Police Board. 

"We've got to reform the Capitol Police Board," Davis said on "Just the News, No Noise" Wednesday. "Remember the optics discussion came about because the Sergeant at Arms, who was the lead security official appointed by Speaker Pelosi at the time, Paul Irving, was worried about optics."

"Decisions that would have countered what we've seen in intelligence gathering since then was not relayed to the police chief," he continued. "It was not acted upon in that system and the Capitol Police Board structure has still not changed. The January 6 Commission did not ask the right questions." 

Davis noted in a previous podcast that there were so many things that could have prevented the January 6 riot, but "politics was a driving force in making the terrible security decisions leading up to January 6."

In recent reports, some evidence has come out that there were security measures that should have been taken to prevent the Jan. 6 riot, but were not taken. 

"We still don't have the apparatus running the Capitol Police in the management that I think would allow our brave officers to succeed in securing the perimeter and the interior of the Capitol complex if we were to see a crowd like January 6 again," Davis noted. 

He said this was in no way a criticism of the Capitol Police officers who saved his life on a baseball field after a shooting that occurred in 2017.

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