Gig Harbor chief: ‘no intelligence’ of any local violence following mob breaching U.S. Capitol
As the U.S. Capitol remained under lockdown due to a mob breaching the building, Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey said his department is not planning any additional precautionary measures to address potential violence.
“We’ve got no intelligence and no activity at all at this point,” Busey said. “We’re just getting up to speed with what’s going on in D.C. If we have any intelligence sources that let us know something is going to happen, of course we’ll respond accordingly.”
Busey said the department relies on information from the Washington State Fusion Center (WSFC), which supports “public safety and homeland security missions of state, local, tribal agencies and private sector entities.”
“We have the state fusion intelligence center then local county intelligence sources,” Busey said.
Busey said they are also monitoring activity taking place today at the state Capitol in Olympia. In December, a Port Orchard man allegedly fired a gun at counter-protestors when he was participating in a pro-Trump rally.
In Gig Harbor, a June protest of about 200 people escalated when a group of men, some of whom were armed, confronted a group of young people demonstrating in support of Black Lives Matter.
One of them was state Rep. Jesse Young, R-Gig Harbor, who said he was not with gun carriers and only there to warn the demonstrators against property damage.
Busey said that he was proud of the way his officers responded to that incident.
“That went very smoothly and everybody was very cooperative,” Busey said. “We were front and center and worked with the demonstrators and not against them. We set some boundaries but afforded them every opportunity to express their first amendment rights.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 1:36 PM.
