(This is the third part of a three-part series on major new revelations in the investigation into the killing of Miriam Carey. Read Part I: Police whistleblower asserts cops 'murdered' mom and Part II: Stunner! Cops broke rules in case of 'murdered' mom )
WASHINGTON – A whistleblower inside the U.S. Capitol Police Department says superiors are “terrified” of the Miriam Carey case in which the Connecticut mother, with a toddler in her vehicle, made a wrong turn near the White House was pursued and shot dead in apparent violation of policy and procedures.
In Part 1 of this three-part series on the latest bombshell developments in the Carey case, WND published a letter recently sent from an anonymous Capitol Police employee who revealed officers inside the department believed Carey was, in effect, murdered by cops.
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WND has obtained a second explosive letter, written a year ago, in which the same Capitol Hill Police officer:
- Implied there was a government cover-up in the Carey case.
- Suggested "neglect" by officers in the Carey case contributed to a death that could have been prevented.
- Stated officers should have faced criminal charges for killing Carey, but the Justice Department "failed" to do so.
- Described the fear in the department if the truth of the Carey case were to be revealed.
At the time, the whistleblower wrote:
"The most recent event involving the Capitol Police during the president's State of the Union address has also brought Ms. Carey's issue to light. The fact that members of Congress want to know how an armed-robbery suspect was let go by the Capitol Police while Ms. Carey ended up dead should also help in your cause."
Here are the basic facts in the two cases:
Carey is the unarmed, black, single mother who – with her one-year-old daughter in tow – was chased and gunned down by federal agents in the heart of the nation’s capital, after apparently doing nothing more than making a wrong turn at the White House on Oct. 3, 2013.
Police and the media had reported:
- Carey used her car to ram a White House gate.
- Officers tried to stop her from entering White House grounds.
- Officers shot and killed her in self-defense.
But WND discovered and reported:
- Carey did not ram any gates.
- She did not try to enter the White House.
- She did not violate any laws.
- She was unarmed.
- She was shot in the back.
The strikingly similar incident, with a vastly different outcome, happened more than a year later, during President Obama's State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2015.
- During the speech, officers engaged in a high-speed chase of a robbery suspect in a White Ford Crown Victoria.
- The suspect reportedly ran seven red lights at speeds up to 80 mph.
- The suspect nearly struck Capitol Police and Supreme Court officers.
- The suspect was only stopped by a snowplow near the Rayburn House Office Building.
- The suspect resisted arrest by refusing to leave his car until an officer tackled him to the ground.
- The suspect did not even have a driver’s license.
Capitol Police officers released the suspect without even arresting him.
That caused the whistleblower to remark:
"There have been rumors the Department is terrified of the two cases being brought up simultaneously because it will revive interest and talk about Ms. Carey. Whether you have to force Congress, go through the media, or demonstrate on Capitol Hill, I do hope you continue to fight on behalf of the Carey family, especially for the child she left behind."
At the time, Capitol Police public relations officer Lt. Kimberly Schneider claimed the suspect in the 2015 incident 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.
And, the difference in the outcomes of the State of the Union incident and the Carey chase could not have been more stark.
After Carey merely made a U-turn to leave a White House guard post, she was chased through the streets of the capital and finally cornered by Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents who shot her dead in her car.
WND, which has investigated the Carey case exhaustively, sent a series of questions about both chases to Lt. 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.
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.”
That sentiment seemed to be shared by rank and file Capitol Hill Police officers, on whose behalf the whistleblower wrote:
"The fact that members of Congress want to know how an armed robbery suspect was let go by the Capitol Police while Ms. Carey ended up dead should also help in your cause."
As WND reported at the time, that was exactly what happened. Elected representatives noticed the discrepancies in the outcome of the cases, and the State of the Union incident 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 would discuss the incident with Capitol Police Chief Kim C. Dine.
Senate Rules and Administration Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also said he wanted to dig deeper.
However, when WND asked those lawmakers, and more than 100 others, if they would call for a congressional investigation into the Carey shooting, there was not one response.
The anonymous Capitol Police officer serving as whistleblower apparently did so at some risk to his or her job, as the initial letter boldly asserted officers should have been criminally charged in the death of Carey:
"Sir, I am writing this in confidence since my job with the United States Capitol Police would be in jeopardy for publicly coming forward. First, please give my condolences to the family of Ms. Miriam Carey for their loss. While the U.S. attorney has failed to prosecute the officers involved in the actual shooting, I would like you to focus on another aspect of this tragedy, one that was vaguely mentioned in the article, the neglect of the Capitol Police."
That aspect was what the whistleblower claimed was a misuse by Capitol Police of the huge metal "pop-up" barriers that can rise up the middle of Washintgon streets to stop traffic, and were installed after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"It is well known throughout the Department that the Capitol Police were operating the 'pop-up' barriers on the Avenues without procedures in place. This is especially relevant since when Ms. Carey was driving towards Capitol Hill, the officers operating the safety barriers would have/should have raised these barriers, and this alone would have prevented Ms. Carey from driving up Constitution Avenue where she was ultimately shot.
The whistleblower buttressed the assertion that the barriers had been dangerously operated by including a copy of an article in Roll Call about a horrible accident involving the barriers about a half-year before the Carey incident.
According to the article, on Feb. 13, 2013, a motorcycle officer "sped off to stop a car that had run a red light just as one of the barriers was coming up and he was severely injured."
The article continued, "Certain changes to protocol at security checkpoints should have been addressed seven months ago, said Capitol Police Labor Committee President Jim Konczos, when he and his colleagues reached out to Tom Reynolds, then the acting Capitol Police chief, to express their concerns."
The whistleblower felt that proper use of the barriers could have saved Carey's life, and, instead, improper use nearly killed an officer:
"While people may speculate as to the outcome, there was a high probability Ms. Carey's vehicle would have been diverted with the proper use of the barricades making the outcome of this much different. The fact that the Capitol Police almost killed one of their own shows the uncertainty in which many of these officers routinely operate. There has even been talk that the officers working these avenues did not have up-to-date training to operate these barriers, which shows negligence on the Capitol Police."
The officer who was almost killed was in a Capitol Police cruiser chasing Carey that slammed into a security barrier when it suddenly popped-up on Constitution Ave.
The car struck the barrier with such force that witnesses thought they’d heard an explosion. The collision caused an injury to an officer requiring an airlift to the hospital. The officer recovered, but the chase was not immediately halted, even after that near tragedy.
It is a violation of the Capitol Police vehicular pursuit policy to continue a pursuit when an officer or civilian's life has been put in danger, as WND outlined in Part II of this series.
This series is based upon two letters sent anonymously by a Capitol Police officer to Carey family attorney Sanders, who then provided it to WND. The attorney, a former New York Police Department officer himself, said the author of the letter is definitely a Capitol Police officer speaking on behalf of other such officers who “know inside details only an employee would know."
The letters substantiates much of WND’s reporting and contradicts much of the official version of events, including the contention there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against officers for Carey’s death.
WND has spent two-and-a-half years attempting to crack an official stonewall in the shooting death of Carey by Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents. WND has published more than 80 stories on the Carey case, including three-dozen investigative pieces revealing so much damning information that civil liberties experts concluded she was, in effect, murdered.
Sanders believes there 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.
Here is a copy of the initial letter sent by the Capitol Police whistleblower to Sanders: