4 minute read
“Protecting the Democratic Process Itself”
POST-GRAD PROFILES
Alum Takes Over as Capitol Police Chief in Wake of Jan. 6 Riot A
police chief for decades in D.C.’s two biggest suburban counties, J. Thomas Manger ’76 knows well the procedures for backing up law enforcement agencies facing unrest in the nation’s capital. As he watched a mob storm the U.S. Capitol last Jan. 6 on live TV, brutalizing badly outnumbered U.S. Capitol Police and District of Columbia officers, it was clear those steps weren’t being followed.
“I was alternately angry and in tears,” Manger says. “I just wanted to grab 150 of my cops and go down there.”
Except he no longer had officers to lead into the fray. After 15 years as Montgomery County, Md., police chief, he’d turned in his badge in early 2019 to enjoy time with his wife and teenage children while easing into a less life-anddeath assignment as legislative director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Now, for the first time, he regretted retiring.
He wouldn’t have to for long. Congressional recruiters quickly recognized that Manger’s blend of D.C. smarts, emphasis on community engagement and dedication to officers’ well-being made him an ideal successor to Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief a day after the attack.
Manger started his third posting as a police chief in July, making clear he doesn’t consider his job one of cleaning house or fixing a broken department.
J. THOMAS MANGER ’76
CLASS NOTES
—LUTHER REYNOLDS, CHARLESTON, S.C., POLICE CHIEF
While the force couldn’t keep rioters out of the Capitol, it did accomplish— with much individual heroism—the imperatives of protecting lawmakers and allowing the 2020 presidential election certification to proceed.
Just as in previous top jobs, he’ll focus heavily on relationships, says a former assistant chief in Montgomery County who calls Manger a mentor. That includes building ties with his officers, the community he’s sworn to protect and community leaders (no shortage of those on Capitol Hill, Manger jokes).
“He’s not going to go in and fire a lot of people, or pound his fist and say, ‘We’re doing things my way now,’” says Luther Reynolds, now police chief in Charleston, S.C. “A lot of his leadership is based on listening and knowing what to do with that … Tom’s approach is, ‘Let’s find what’s working well and build on it.’”
The commitment to serve rather than dominate a department or community was strongly inculcated in him in University of Maryland criminology classes, Manger says—although his first job out of college as an Ocean City summer cop in 1976 was far from a leadership academy. “I think they gave us a week of training and then sent us out with a gun and a badge,” he says.
He was living with his family in Silver Spring and applying for jobs throughout the region when he got the call from Fairfax County, Va. Over 27 years, he worked his way up to chief, a position he held for six years before moving to Montgomery County. In those postings he focused on police accountability—for instance, introducing dashcams in Fairfax and wearing a body camera himself in Montgomery—and changing department cultures to embrace a “serve and protect” ethos. Long before the killings of Michael Brown and George Floyd transfixed the nation on the toll of unequal policing, Manger worked on building bridges to marginalized communities; today, he says, much has changed for the better in both style and substance from the early days of his career, when his jaw dropped at racial slurs casually tossed about in squad rooms.
Leading the U.S. Capitol Police Department—which suffered widespread physical and psychological injuries during the Jan. 6 attack, including the deaths of several officers and the resignations of many others since then—he focuses on the stresses of policing in the 21st century, to support his officers and reshape a national narrative he worries will make it harder to carry out the department’s unique charge. “There’s no other police agency,” Manger says, “that does what we do—protecting the members of Congress and protecting the democratic process itself.”—cc
BRIONNA JONES ’16, a forward with the Connecticut Sun since 2017, was named the 2021 Associated Press and Kia WNBA Most Improved Player. She averaged 11.2 points, 5.6 rebounds, 1 assist and 26.1 minutes in 21 games, including scoring 34 points against the Indiana Fever during a game last July. She ranked second in the WNBA in offensive rebounding.
BRANDIE SMITH PH.D. ’10 was named the John and Adrienne Mars director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Since joining the staff in 2008, she helped revitalize the giant panda program by integrating excellence in animal husbandry with new technology in reproductive biology.
FRANTIŠEK BRABEC PH.D. ’05 won second place and $125,000 in NASA’s Space Robotics Challenge, a multiyear virtual competition to develop software that would allow robots to operate autonomously on the surface of the Moon and find, excavate and transport resources needed by future astronauts on lunar missions. He is a computer scientist, serial entrepreneur, inventor, adviser and mentor to startups.
RAMIT VARMA ’96, co-founder of the test prep company Revolution Prep, is running for mayor of Los Angeles. Varma, a Democrat with no prior political experience, is campaigning on a platform of ending homelessness in the city and building more affordable housing.
The U.S. Senate confirmed TRACY STONEMANNING ’88 as director of the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees grazing, logging and drilling on 245 million acres of public land. She was most recently senior adviser for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation, and previously served as chief of staff to Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.
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