# United States Capitol Police The **U.S. Capitol Police (USCP)** is the federal law-enforcement agency that protects the Congress — the Capitol building and grounds, members of Congress, and the legislative process. Uniquely, it is a **legislative-branch** police force (founded 1828), overseen by the Capitol Police Board rather than the executive branch, which is constitutionally significant: Congress controls the security of its own seat, a safeguard against executive coercion of the legislature. For the KB, the Capitol Police is inseparable from **January 6, 2021** — the breach of the Capitol, the deaths and injuries among officers, the intelligence and preparedness failures, and the subsequent reforms and reckonings. The agency's conduct, its leadership turnover, and the politics of how the attack on it is remembered (or minimized, or recast) remain live threads in the right-wing-ecosystem story the KB tracks. The legislative-branch status also means that fights over Capitol security — and over who may deploy force around the Capitol — implicate the same [[Separation of Powers]] questions as the [[National Guard]] deployments to Washington. This is a stub; expand with the Jan 6 timeline, the post-attack reforms, and leadership changes. ## See Also - [[Congress]] - [[National Guard]] - [[Separation of Powers]] - [[Legislative Agencies Hub]]