The assault of a president's son led to the creation of the U.S. Capitol Police Gillian Brockell and Paul Duggan, The Washington Post April 3, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail The U.S. Capitol in an 1846 daguerreotype.Library of Congress image by John Plumbe It began with a single watchman hired to safeguard the new Capitol building in the country's new capital in 1800. John Golding was the first member of what eventually became the U.S. Capitol Police, a force that grew to 2,300 officers over the course of the next two centuries. On Friday, one officer, Billy Evans, was killed and another officer was injured when they were rammed by a vehicle near the Capitol.