WASHINGTON – A tale of two police chases in the nation's capital with some eerily similar circumstances, but vastly different outcomes, has observers more than puzzled and is raising new questions about the U.S. Capitol Police by members of Congress.
During President Obama's State of the Union address on Jan. 20, officers engaged in a high-speed chase of a robbery suspect in a White Ford Crown Victoria who reportedly ran seven red lights at speeds up to 80 mph; nearly struck Capitol Police and Supreme Court officers; was only stopped by a snowplow near the Rayburn House Office Building and resisted arrest by refusing to leave his car until an officer tackled him to the ground; after which, they learned the man did not even have a driver's license.
Officers released the suspect without even arresting him.
TRENDING: America's most dangerous demographic
By contrast, on Oct. 3, 2013, unarmed, suburban mother Miriam Carey apparently made a wrong turn into a White House entrance at a guard gate, made a U-turn to leave, was chased through the streets of the capital and finally cornered by Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents.
Officers shot her dead in her car.
U.S. Capitol Police have provided no answers on the discrepancies in how the similar cases were handled so differently, declining to respond to inquiries from WND and saying little to other media.
Carey family attorney Eric Sanders told WND he knows why.
"What it boils down to is that they decided to not make the same critical tactical and legal mistakes they made in the Miriam Carey case."
He added, "Frankly, they know the same rules of engagement applied in the Miriam Carey case except, in her case, they lost complete supervisory control over their personnel."
Elected representatives have noticed the discrepancies, and this latest incident has sparked renewed interest in the Carey case.
Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said he wanted to look into Capitol Police protocols for traffic crimes and, in reference to Carey, noted, "The other thing that pops into my mind is what made this different than the young lady who got shot up here last year."
A former prosecutor who served as an Army Judge Advocate General Corps officer and assistant U.S. attorney, Amodei also noted Carey committed "a series of some pretty serious traffic offenses, but nothing else that we know of. … So anyhow, that’s something we’ll look into.”
Amodei serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets the Capitol Police's budget.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., is the ranking member of that subcommittee and said she will discuss the incident with Capitol Police Chief Kim C. Dine.
Senate Rules and Administration Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also wants to dig deeper.
His spokeswoman, Amber Marchand, told Roll Call, "This is obviously a very serious matter, and Chairman Blunt and his staff are taking a very close look to get to the bottom of it."
WND has asked those lawmakers to call for a congressional investigation into the Carey shooting.
WND, which has investigated the Carey case exhaustively, also emailed a series of questions about both chases to Capitol Police public relations officer Lt. Kimberly Schneider.
- How do you account for the obvious difference in the way this chase ended, with the suspect not arrested and let go, and the deadly way the chase of Miriam Carey ended on Oct. 3, 2013?
- Why was it necessary to shoot her but not him?
- Why did you say this man did not pose a threat to Capitol security when the Carey chase was portrayed as such?
- Why were responding officers ordered to release the suspect by Capitol Police superiors?
- Why was this suspect not even arrested, as Jim Konczos, chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee’s executive board, said he should have been?
WND did not receive a response to any of those questions.
Sanders shed more light on what he has told WND he believes is a cover-up in the Carey case by Capitol Police, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the U.S. Department of Justice.
"The USCP (Capitol Police) released this person because they knew there was no legal basis to arrest him," Sanders told WND. "They remembered that the U.S. Constitution limits their police powers, as it does every other law enforcement agency. They embraced the fact they do not have some mystical, super law enforcement powers as so many media reporters and talking heads claim."
WND broke the news that Sanders is representing the Carey family in a lawsuit, since upped to $150 million, they are planning to file against the uniformed division of the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police for “numerous intentional, grossly negligent and reckless actions of police officers, supervisors, managers and other related employees.”
"You will never, ever hear them discuss the Miriam Carey case unless the Courts allow the case to move forward," observed Sanders. "I am assuming when we file the federal lawsuit, the USDOJ (Justice Department) will make a Rule 12 Motion to Dismiss, if granted, end of the case. If not, settlement talks will progress rather quickly."
Such talks may go nowhere. Carey family members have told WND they are interested in justice, not money.
Carey was shot and killed by Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents. The official investigation was conducted by the Washington Metro Police and reviewed by the Washington, D.C., branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office, a branch of the Justice Department.
The Justice Department announced on June 10, 2014, that no charges would be filed against any offices in the shooting death of Carey, but they would not release the investigative report. WND has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the report.
Mystery also shrouds the most recent Capitol Hill Police chase.
Roll Call reported the suspect was "was allowed to drive away from the scene after being briefly detained in handcuffs" and that "Capitol Police officers were ordered by superiors to release the driver."
The incident began after officers from the Prince George’s County Police Department in Maryland responded to reports of a man robbed of cash at gunpoint and, a short while later, officers from several jurisdictions spotted a vehicle matching the description of the lookout car.
Officers tried to pull the car over, the driver refused to stop, and officers were given permission to pursue. Officers from several jurisdictions entered Washington and continued the pursuit.
The chase came to an end, thanks to a snow plow positioned to block traffic on Washington Avenue Southwest, a street next to the Rayburn House Office Building, across the street from the Capitol, where the president was giving his State of the Union address.
The robbery victim reportedly could not identify the driver. Capitol Police then released the driver.
Roll Call reported, "According to witnesses who were outside, there was a tense confrontation between Capitol Police and the officers from Maryland, who could not make an arrest outside of their jurisdiction."
"He should have been arrested for obvious traffic violations that took place in front of the Capitol," said Jim Konczos, chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee’s executive board.
Noting the heightened security during the State of the Union address, Konczos told the paper he saw “no valid reason that this individual wasn’t arrested.”
"For the life of me, I don’t understand how you can let someone who should have been arrested for reckless endangerment and reckless driving [go],” he later added.
District Heights, Maryland, Police Chief Elliott Gibson did tell Roll Call the the driver will be arrested later for a "host of traffic violations" that occurred in Maryland.
Capitol Police Lt. Kimberly Schneider claimed the man did not pose a threat to the Capitol and said in a statement, "Particularly on State of the Union night when the USCP’s primary mission to protect the Congress with an operationally enhanced, hardened perimeter is our primary focus."
However, protecting Congress and the White House were reasons the police gave for chasing and killing Miriam Carey.
"The U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court, and other buildings within the Capitol square were put on lockdown in response to the 'shots fired' report," read the statement issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office on July, 10, 2014, in announcing the Justice Department would not file charges against any officers in the death of Carey.
However, the only shots were fired by officers, who inexplicably used deadly force to stop Carey.
In fact, members of Congress gave officers a standing ovation for protecting them from the threat posed by the unarmed, suburban mother from Stamford, Connecticut, who was shot in the back multiple times in her car, with her infant daughter strapped into the back seat.
That was despite the fact, as WND reported, authorities knew of Carey's identity within minutes of the start of the chase, and that she posed no terrorist threat.
WND has reported extensively on the circumstances surrounding Carey's death, beginning with the very first eye-witness accounts reported from the scene, just moments after the shooting.
After apparently making a wrong turn near the White House gate at 15th and E Street on Oct. 3, 2013, Carey found herself surrounded by menacing federal officers brandishing firearms. Realizing her mistake, she made a U-turn and tried to depart.
But Secret Service agents and Capitol Police chased the dental hygienist down Pennsylvania Avenue at high speeds and forced her to a stop in the shadow of the nation's Capitol, having fired 27 bullets at her.
Despite their erratic marksmanship, the shooters somehow missed the 34-year-old's infant daughter, strapped into the backseat of Carey's black 2010 Infiniti G37Xs Coupe.
Even after more than a year, nobody knows exactly why Carey was killed by federal officers after she drove to the nation's capital from her home in suburban Connecticut, because the Department of Justice, or DOJ, has refused to release the final investigative report.
But Carey family attorney Eric Sanders has told WND the Secret Service lied about what happened.
Secret Service 'lies'
Sanders pointed to two key elements in the Carey case in which he believed the Secret Service had lied.
The attorney said the real cause of the confrontation with Carey at the White House was not because she refused to stop, as the Secret Service had claimed. He said the incident only happened because Secret Service security was so lax that agents allowed her to accidentally enter the area without stopping her at the gate.
A former New York City Police officer himself, Sanders emphasized, "I've said from the beginning they (agents) were poorly trained and poorly disciplined, and now it's been confirmed."
That echoed what Sanders told WND in July 2014, when he marveled, "She somehow got past them. You know how she got past them? Because they were over there, smoking and joking and lackadaisical, just like I said from the beginning."
According to the attorney, the second clear instance of an official fudging of the truth was the explanation given as to why agents and officers shot Carey at the Garfield traffic circle, just below the Capitol.
Sanders said the reason authorities did not release photos of officers shooting at Carey at Garfield Circle is because their excuse is so weak.
"Officers were (supposedly) concerned because she was driving toward people on the sidewalk," he said. "They didn't show pictures of anyone on the sidewalk. They didn't show she was about to run anybody over, either."
The attorney explained what he saw as the absurdity of that reasoning.
"Think about that one for a minute," he said. "Let's assume there was someone in front of her car. And you morons are shooting at her from the back? What are you, stupid? So, you miss her and then you shoot (innocent bystanders?)"
Nonetheless, the DOJ cited that supposed concern for bystanders when it announced in July that no criminal charges would be filed against agents or officers.
Sanders called the DOJ's refusal to release the official report on the incident a "stonewall."
Congressional silence
WND has contacted more than 100 members of Congress seeking comment on the case and has not received one reply.
Some lawmakers were contacted multiple times, as WND made more than 170 inquiries.
In April, WND contacted 37 of the most civil-rights minded and libertarian-oriented members of Congress, presenting the facts of the case and asking if they believed the shooting was justified and if a congressional inquiry would be appropriate.
In July, WND made the same inquiry to the 18 members of the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service, the nine members of the House Administration Committee, which oversees the Capitol Police, and the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
In September, WND made another inquiry to both the Homeland Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus and the chairmen of key congressional investigative committees.
Later, WND did not ask for any comment on whether the shooting may have been justified, but merely asked whether the public deserved to know what actually happened and why, by having the DOJ release the investigation.
Even after the credibility of the Secret Service has come under such serious scrutiny, WND still hasn't heard from even one member of Congress expressing interest in how and why Miriam Carey visited the nation's capital and ended up dead.
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth