Capitol Police Find Hurdles on Path to Reform

In May, a GAO report noted "significant progress" by Gainer's successor, Chief Phillip D. Morse, in cleaning up the department's administrative side. Within weeks, however, Capitol Police pulled 15 recruits out of a training course in Georgia after discovering a major blunder: The officers had been hired even though they failed to meet employment criteria, including psychological exams and criminal checks.

The department's human resources director, Jennifer McCarthy, was placed on leave, and the recruits were told that they would be terminated. They have all appealed. Morse said in an interview that he could not discuss the cases in detail because they were under review.

"The processes and protocols we had in place were strong" in the human resources department, he said. "They didn't work here because they weren't followed. I want to stress this is isolated."

The Senate Rules Committee has said it will hold a hearing on the issues July 16. Gainer, who helps oversee the Capitol Police, and key legislators have stood by Morse.

"We think he's made significant improvements," Collins said. "We're not where we need to be administratively and technologically, but we're moving in the right direction."

Transforming the Capitol Police into an anti-terrorism force is particularly difficult because of the nature of their work, say current and former police officials. The department is a hybrid force, with many officers performing tasks similar to those of security guards -- checking briefcases, giving directions to tourists -- and others focusing on intelligence or bomb-defusing activities.

The department is as big as Cleveland's police force, but officers work at a 276-acre complex, where they get much less experience handling crime. And yet they must be ready for danger at any time. In 1998, a man with a history of mental illness stormed past a metal detector and killed two officers, a tragedy that shook up the department and accelerated its transformation.

Still, supervisory leadership sometimes remains weak, according to current and former department officials. That was a factor, they said, in the 2006 case of a drug-addled man with a loaded pistol who raced through two poorly guarded entrances and into the Capitol. He was detained without harm.

The Capitol Police are unlike other law enforcement agencies in another way: They answer to 535 bosses, the members of Congress.

"No other department has a 535-member city council that oversees it, and no department has literally dozens of [congressional] staffers trying to constantly micromanage that department," said William H. Pickle, the former Senate sergeant-at-arms.

The result is a department sometimes whipsawed by contradictory demands. In April, for example, legislators at a House hearing accused Capitol Police leaders of invading employees' privacy by doing a department-wide criminal check this year.

Now the department is in trouble for not paying more attention to recruits' criminal backgrounds.