After nearly four years, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger says he’s retiring at the end of May.

It’s not the first time that Manger, 70, has retired as the leader of a police agency. He served as Fairfax County police chief from 1998 to 2004.

Manger left that job to serve as the chief of police in Montgomery County from 2004 to 2019.

When asked if this retirement is the end of his time with a police agency, Manger said, “It’s certainly my intention for this to be my last police job.”

But he added, “If someone wanted to hire me to do something else, and I felt like I could contribute and do something,” he would consider it, but he has no plans at this time.

Leading U.S. Capitol Police after insurrection

Manger, who sat down with WTOP for an interview at the Capitol police headquarters, started his career in law enforcement as an officer with the Fairfax County police in 1977. He reflects on his career with pride.

“I felt like for my first 42 years of being a police officer, that I was serving my community,” Manger said. “And I feel today like I’m serving my country.”

Manger took the job as the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in July of 2021 and said part of what drove him was watching the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Some people in this country believe January 6 wasn’t that bad,” Manger said. “My cops know what happened on January 6. They know what happened. They were here.”

He was determined to improve the agency, and said he walked into the job with a long to-do list.

“Well, I got here, I had the advantage, and I say that sort of halfway, tongue in cheek, I had the advantage of, you know, 15 after-action reports that told me everything that was wrong with the Capitol Police, everything that failed on January 6, and over 100 recommendations of things that needed to be done,” he said.

And now as he prepares to step down, Manger said, “every single one of those recommendations has been resolved, has been implemented, and so I’m very proud that we accomplished that, but there’s still work to be done.”

When Manger started on the job in 2021, “It was documented in a number of the after-action reports that the Capitol Police was woefully understaffed, and had been, in fact, woefully understaffed for many, many years. And January 6 just sort of exposed that,” he said.

Manger worked to add positions that are responsible for protecting members of Congress, a job that’s expanded as the number of threats against lawmakers have more than doubled from roughly 4,000 in 2017 to about 9,000 currently.

Referring to the police that protect members of Congress, “We have probably around 260, maybe 280 of these protection agents. We really need to have a little over 500,” he said.

Manger said the budget for the U.S. Capitol Police is about $1 billion.

“We’re responsible for safety of members of Congress, you know, all over the country, we’re responsible for investigating over 9,000 threats a year that occur all over the country,” he said. “And we’ve got to respond there and investigate them and deal with them. When you have that kind of responsibility, it costs money.”

Along with adding positions, Manger worked to retain officers, something that’s been a challenge as he worked to fill positions. Officers, he said, were routinely working double shifts.

“Their overtime throughout the year is through the roof,” he said. “While everybody says, ‘Oh, well, it’s good to get a little overtime, a little extra money,’ when you have no quality of life, when you’re never home to see your family, that’s a problem.”

He said the best part of his latest job as police chief, aside from the people he works with, is the mission, which he defined as “to protect the legislative branch of government, to make sure that the legislative branch of government can do their job unimpeded.”

He added, “It’s going to sound corny, but every day I’m driving down North Capitol Street for the last part of my commute to work, and all I can see, you know, in front of me, is the dome of the Capitol,” he said. “It inspires me every day.”

Manger notes that the worst day on the job for him was when 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection were pardoned .

“That was a day that I was as I was angry and as frustrated about that as I’ve ever been professionally,” he said.

Manger added as discouraging as that was, it made him determined to continue to make improvements. “What it made me feel like is somebody’s got to stay here and stand up for these cops,” he said.

Past and future policing

As Manger began his career in policing in the late 1970s, he admitted much has changed over the years.

“I have seen policing evolve since the mid ’70s, and it’s been a rocky road at times,” Manger said of the police work.

Despite cases that make national news, such as the deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Manger said, “We are light-years from where we were in the mid ’70s.”

“We do a better job at selecting the right people for the job. We do a better job at training police officers throughout their career, and we are held more accountable. The police are held more accountable today than they have ever before in our history,” he said.

Manger said technology has driven a lot of that.

Back in the ’90s, as police chief in Fairfax County, he added dashboard cameras to patrol cars.

“In 2016, I put body worn cameras on every patrol officer in Montgomery County, and I got body worn cameras on Capitol Police officers here, and that program, I hope, continues to expand,” he said.

Manger tends to be optimistic, but said one area that remains concerning in departments across the region is juvenile crime. But Manger is not a fan of the get-tough approach.

Cracking down, he believes, is not the answer.

“It’s education, it’s jobs, it’s other social safety net things, it’s family interventions” Manger said. “All those kinds of things would have a bigger impact than, ‘Oh, more police, more arrests.'”

That said, he does believe there are some juveniles as young as 14 and 15 years old who should be in a “detention setting,” but he said they should also get services directed at rehabilitation and reform.

When asked if technology is creating a barrier between police and the communities they work in, Manger said, “It’s always going to be a up to a police chief to create a culture in a police department where you’re really there to serve people, that the public’s not the enemy, that we work together with the public to create a safe environment. And I think most police chiefs in this country now understand that, and I’m so proud of the advances that the profession has made.”

Manger said his wife once told him how lucky he was because his job made a difference in people’s lives.

Looking back on his decades in law enforcement, Manger said he hopes that communities were safer, and that people felt safer “as a result of our efforts.”

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