WASHINGTON — Direct threats or “concerning statements” made against members of Congress decreased in 2022, reversing an upward trend over “the last couple of decades,” the U.S. Capitol Police said Tuesday.
The department said it investigated 7,501 cases in 2022, down from 9,625 the year before, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The threats against members of Congress are still too high,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said in a statement, which didn’t detail why the number dropped.
The sudden reversal in 2022 came despite one of the most prominent cases of lawmaker-directed violence in October, when a man allegedly broke into then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi.
Still, the number of cases had been steadily increasing over the years. In 2017, the figure was 3,939. The department has hired its own lawyers to work with the Justice Department. Those lawyers specialize in threat cases encountered by members Congress.
While the Capitol Police said they cannot discuss specific measures in place to protect lawmakers, they did cite the 2021 opening of field offices in areas where the most threats against members of both parties have been received — Florida and California.
Social media is partly to blame for the threats that befall members of both parties similarly, according to the agency.
“Overall, during the last couple of decades the threat assessment section’s caseload has increased because people on social media have a false sense of anonymity and feel more emboldened,” Mario Scalora, the Capitol Police’s consulting psychologist, said in the statement. “This is not a problem we can only arrest our way out of.”
