13 ms·

In terms of physical intrusion, a tremendous amount of security theater was exposed today. Quite astonishing how easily people were able to gain access.

ReaganFJones 6y ago
I'm not sure if it could be largely characterized as security theater. The videos from the Capitol demonstrate just how outmatched the police were: https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233 https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233 There were clear examples of failures like the police letting them in or taking selfies with them. We'll see what oversight gets applied to the Capitol police... https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/capitol-riots-police-firings-455698 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/capitol-riots-polic...
- preommr 6y ago
  > The videos from the Capitol demonstrate just how outmatched the police were Not sure if I understand the point you're trying to make. They shouldn't have been outmatched in the first place. The protest was planned and the information was extremely overt. Something went horribly wrong for this to happen.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    Any one of those protestors could have brought in a bomb. They weren't exactly going through metal detectors. Given that a pipe bomb was found at the RNC, and a suspicious package of some sort at the DNC, I'm surprised someone didn't try. I wonder how worried security there was about explosive devices and weighing whether to open fire.
    - zionic 6y ago
      And yet they didn’t. Consider the implications of that
      - Shared404 6y ago
        There was someone arrested with materials for Molotov cocktails. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
        macawfish 6y ago
        I believe there were full on bombs found, as in IEDs with electronic parts.
      - munk-a 6y ago
        There were two IEDs discovered in the capital today - neither in the state house but still... super bad for security.
        Natsu 6y ago
        One of those was at the RNC, I haven't heard of the other one yet.
      - morsch 6y ago
        We're at the stage where we're giving out merit awards for not bombing a seat of government after having stormed it?
    - seanp2k2 6y ago
      Many of them were also carrying guns. No idea who thought it'd be a good idea to just stand down and let them in, but my guess is that making martyrs of them would push us closer to something like the beginning of a civil war.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Nothing went wrong. The police overwhelmingly support Trump, they were complicit.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    At least according to NYT[1] it seems like the police being outmatched was rather intentional. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-protests/trump-rebuffed-initial-requests-to-deploy-the-national-guard-to-the-capitol-pence-gave-the-go-ahead https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-pro...
  - smolder 6y ago
    The police seem to have stood down because they are sympathetic. There's video circulating of the rioters being let through barricades by the officers manning them. I'll say it's plausible they were not prepared to resist the crowd, but the way it looks is like they wanted to participate.
- quasse 6y ago
  >outmatched I wouldn't say that's even a fair characterization. Per the capitol police website they have 2,600 officers and a budget of $460 million. It honestly just ... didn't look like they were trying very hard. They managed to arrest what, 14 people? Compare that to the BLM protests on the west coast where unmarked vans of feds were literally rolling up and black bagging people off the street. USCP is charged with protecting Congress, and I think members of congress should be thinking hard about whether the police were complicit in what happened today. [1] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/uscp-fast-facts https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/uscp-fast-facts
  - zionic 6y ago
    Your media consumption bias is showing. It took months of weekly action for a few feds to show up last summer
    - wtallis 6y ago
      The standards for response time ought to be rather higher for a large police force that exists primarily to protect a single building complex. And then there's the fact that the Capitol is obviously a much higher-profile target than a random federal courthouse.
  - xienze 6y ago
    > Compare that to the BLM protests on the west coast where unmarked vans of feds were literally rolling up and black bagging people off the street. Boy, I wonder if the fact that these guys basically just goofed around and took pictures instead of burning down the capitol (like what happened in the Portland courthouse) had any bearing on that.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      That appears to be related to competency, not intentions. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
    - 6y ago
- gibolt 6y ago
  They had weapons (lethal and non-lethal) and decided not to use them, even though they were well within their right (and probably duty) to do so.
  - xienze 6y ago
    Did you miss the young woman who was shot and killed?
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      We still don't know who fired that shot, and there were no reports of shots fired otherwise. Given the scope of what happened, a single lethal shot fired is kind of a miracle. And shocking given how many injuries and deaths we saw from protests earlier in the year which were under far better control, with far more law enforcement involved.
      - guscost 6y ago
        There were concealed guns everywhere on both sides this time, so not as surprising to me. Nobody wanted to start a bloodbath.
      - seanp2k2 6y ago
        If you poke around a bit on YouTube, there are multiple videos of it happening on there. My guess is that the woman was trying to get into a corridor that the Secret Service was protecting, and they really didn't want anyone in there. Capitol Police seemed unaware of this as a few of them armed with long guns stood on the same side of the door literally right next to the woman who was shot, when she was shot after trying to enter through that broken window.
      - ibejoeb 6y ago
        > D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee confirmed late Wednesday that Babbit was shot by a Capitol police officer https://www.fox5dc.com/news/woman-shot-killed-after-pro-trump-protesters-charged-us-capitol-identified https://www.fox5dc.com/news/woman-shot-killed-after-pro-trum...
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, are there general best practices for dealing with a sudden, massive loss of access control like this?
  - throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
    Run through the other exit if there's still time, and take the time to hide your id card so it's not visible. You don't want to be lynched.
- rasz 6y ago
  Outmatched or just letting people in? Mixed messages in this video, some cops standing ground while others just deciding to remove themselves from the post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ9oThRuMVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ9oThRuMVs
- gonzo41 6y ago
  Any cop that took a selfie should face charges along with the rioters. That's crazy. But the systemic failure was the lack of support from the President himself and the deployment of the national guard.
  - splintercell 6y ago
    Wait, why? You want cops to be more like stoic stormtroopers? If every cop out there took a selfie with rioters, it would have been easier to manage them by a degree. Imagine hundreds of selfies with cops were posted in right wing social media, how will that not make right wing protestors have a nicer attitude towards the cop in the future? what's really the downside of letting this happen? Not focused on crowd control? This is also crowd control.
    - gonzo41 6y ago
      As demonstrated by the mobs actions, they weren't there to protest. They were there to wreck the joint. The cops let their guard down. It's silly to think that being chummy with the crowd would deescalate them when they've been prepping for this for ages.
      - ghthor 6y ago
        If they were there to wreck the joint, it would have been wrecked. From what I saw many protestors were stopping the anarchist from causing any real damage.
    - enumjorge 6y ago
      If this is how cops de-escalate then it’s a massive double standard to how they dealt with protesters over the summer, including the time they tear gassed peaceful protesters to make way for Trump’s photo op right there on DC in June [0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
- megameter 6y ago
  Riot cops are regularly outnumbered. They are trained to use less-lethals to outmanuever, disperse and kettle crowds like this. They had advance warning and could have dispersed the early crowds. It was just this past summer that Trump had a crowd near the White House dispersed with tear gas to give a speech where he held a Bible upside down. But when the time came today, there were no tear gas or 40mm rounds, no LRAD. The security simply didn't show up when the expected crowd was percieved to be aligned with the police. This is a consistent pattern throughout our law enforcement system.
  - rasz 6y ago
    There was at least one LRAD Humvee parked out front with mob jumping on its roof. Someone made a decision not to use it.
deleted 6y ago
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seventytwo 6y ago
I wonder why there wasn’t more security given this protest was known, and literally all of congress was in session.
- tolbish 6y ago
  Based on today's event, why would you think that they wanted to stop these rioters? Security was taking selfies with them.
  - bostik 6y ago
    Not just that. Based on the reports, some of the rioters were carrying blue lives matter flags. I would say it's pretty obvious there were shared sympathies between the mob and those protecting the Capitol. Being overrun by attackers is one thing. Ignoring them would be dereliction of duty. But assisting and siding with them? I don't even know what you'd call that anymore.
- bublyboi 6y ago
  Didn’t the mayor of DC literally request that the feds NOT provide federal agents due to experiences with the BLM protests? She probably saved many lives with that decision. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532739-bowser-to-doj-pentagon-dc-isnt-requesting-federal-law-enforcement-to?amp https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532739-bowser-to...
  - matham 6y ago
    Sure, but there's a difference between coming with riot gear and attacking protestors, and posting 10 cops to guard all of congress and then have them walk away when protestors show up leaving the doors wide open. They could have easily guarded the building itself. Close the doors and post 30 guards at each entrance?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Interestingly, everything I read today said that they did request assistance. A day or two ago. It just took until the events unfolded for anything to happen. A very quick Google search turned up: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/urging-calm-dc-mayor-calls-national-guard-protests-75038523 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/urging-calm-dc-may...
adventured 6y ago
We saw the same thing during the Kavanaugh protests. The protestors were able to gain access to several locations in Federal buildings that they weren't supposed to be in. Nothing was changed to improve security, rather stupidly. During both Kavanaugh and the BLM / Antifa protests members of Congress were repeatedly threatened with death and or general physical violence (eg Rand Paul, a pacifist, being surrounded by a hyper violent mob and having to be shielded by half a dozen police officers as the mob tried to attack him and his family), little appears to have been modified to adjust for the atmosphere of increasing partisan violence that is enfulging the US. It's obvious what that's going to inevitably result in unless some appropriate security steps are taken. The partisan violence will get dramatically worse this decade as the sides split further apart. Some people foolishly think Biden is the end of it; Trump was only a symptom of what's happening, which is the beginning of a cultural civil war (the two major political sides in the US have absolutely nothing in common now), and increasingly intense acts of violence will go along with that.
- 8note 6y ago
  True pacisfism isn't not congruent with his capitalist leanings. Rand Paul is someone who's very ok with the police beating up and killing black people, so it makes sense that they'd be yelling at him
- dhruvdh 6y ago
  I would say that both sides do have common ground, where common ground is lacking is mostly between politicians and the lower/middle class.
- wolverine876 6y ago
  Can you cite bases for these claims and characterizations? Nobody has stormed the Capitol and violently disrupted Congress since the war of 1812, as I understand it. Certainly I've never seen anything like it. I don't agree that the protests described are remotely the same, nor with the characterization of the summer protests as "BLM/Antifa". I saw plenty of massive BLM protests, zero Antifa except occasionally on TV. It's like calling Redmond WA the town of Microsoft / Joe's Diner. The idea that it's both sides and civil war is coming is certainly a claim of the militant right wing that seeks violence. Nobody else says it that I know of.
bmitc 6y ago
I was really disappointed and disheartened. It showed great weakness. I recently watched the movie Olympus Has Fallen. We were just wanting a dumb action movie to pass the time. The North Korean terrorists just basically walked in and took the White House. We were like, how stupid is that, no way that could really happen. And here today, we literally saw it happen. People took over one of our nation’s most important buildings with extremely high level people in it without a sweat, without resistance, and basically without repercussions. I remarked today to my family that I bet Russians and North Koreans were watching going, wait, we can just walk in? Of course they couldn’t because they aren’t white “Americans”. And all of this really paints a nasty picture of what happened today. It was a soup of treason, violence, white privilege, disgrace, sadness, and weakness. I mean, a bomb on the grounds was found and detonated by a bomb squad and people were still allowed to stay on the premises. I really could not believe how they could just take over the place. I even saw a video where police actually just opened the gates for them.
- clintonb 6y ago
  The bomb was found at RNC headquarters, a few blocks away from the Capitol, not the Capitol itself.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    [An article I read said] There was an additional bomb also found on the Capitol grounds. Obviously this is a developing situation. And the details don’t actually matter to my point. Clear and present evidence to commit acts of domestic terrorism was available, and people were still allowed to loiter and vandalize as they pleased.
    - xienze 6y ago
      No, the DNC (well, it’s speculated). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
      - 6y ago
dzdt 6y ago
Police take orders from above. Clearly the order of the day was to have minimal presence and avoid conflict with the protesters.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
  What makes it clear to you that this was an order and not the result of incompetence?
  - runarberg 6y ago
    e.g. comparison to similarly sized BLM protests
    - curryst 6y ago
      Part of me wonders if this was malicious compliance with the demands to downsize police. "You want less police? See what happens?" That doesn't seem beyond belief.
      - runarberg 6y ago
        Don’t attribute ignorance which can be safely explained by malice I think it is much more likely that this downsizing had everything to do with who the protestors were—i.e. their political views and skin color—in each case.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    The police are overwhelmingly Trump supporters, and the comparison to the response to BLM protests is stark: https://twitter.com/Tender_oni/status/1346916038269689862?s=19 https://twitter.com/Tender_oni/status/1346916038269689862?s=... https://twitter.com/theangiestanton/status/1346956067301941249?s=19 https://twitter.com/theangiestanton/status/13469560673019412... Edit: anyone want to respond about what's wrong with my comment rather than arbitrarily down voting?
    - 6y ago
xienze 6y ago
You mean a courthouse in Portland being burned down during the summer didn’t already shake your faith in the security of our federal buildings? And I’m not sure if people are aware but the capitol is a public building. Meaning, on a normal day anyone can just go in there. There wouldn’t have been the physical intrusion everyone is catching the vapors over if they hadn’t put up barriers and shut down the whole city in the first place. You know, I’m actually starting to understand that whole argument about how preemptive shows of force by the police can actually escalate a situation...
- dboreham 6y ago
  Hmm. I've been in the capitol building. From memory you can't just waltz in there like it's grand central station.
- coddingtonbear 6y ago
  As a person who lives in Portland, I can tell you “burned down” is an incredible exaggeration. Somebody did set a desk on fire, though.
vinni2 6y ago
Isn’t this lapse in security somehow intentional? Most likely ordered by Trump not to interfere or he intentionally weakened the security.
- brobdingnagians 6y ago
  Or ordered by someone else so that they could call it an attempted coup.
tsimionescu 6y ago
I think it was obvious from everything we've seen, especially in comparison to the recent protests, that the police response was deliberately small. Whether they received orders to allow the protesters in, whether they themselves decided to do it, whether they were denied reinforcements - its obvious that something caused police response to be almost non-existent to an obvious threat. If there had been a BLM rally instead of a MAGA rally on the steps of the capitol the day the election is certified, they would have been kept well away from the building with riot gear.
- craftinator 6y ago
  > If there had been a BLM rally instead of a MAGA rally on the steps of the capitol the day the election is certified, they would have been kept well away from the building with riot gear. Living in Portland, I had this same thought. Random one way streets in downtown Portland get a much more violent, immediate, and overwhelming police response on a nightly basis than the Capitol building did when there was an obvious riot forming. If it had been a BLM rally, the tear-gas would have started before any protester had made it up the steps, the same way it still happens in Portland. What a fucked up country I live in.
sershe 6y ago
Well, how were they supposed to prevent it? I personally support killing rioters (of both political wings), but that is not palatable anymore. The building is not exactly and armored bunker. If they don't use force, there's quite literally nothing they can do to secure it. The same reason you can almost never win conventional wars in enemy territory anymore (that one might be for the best, but true nonetheless).
- nepeckman 6y ago
  We spent all summer watching as police subjected peaceful protesters to violent methods of crowd control. Why were there no rubber bullets, tear gas, etc? When BLM marched in DC, there were more armed guards in front of the Lincoln memorial than in front of the Capitol building yesterday. This was absolutely preventable.
  - sershe 6y ago
    First, there was tear gas, and in fact there were rioter(s?) shot by police. Then, you are comparing one protest to hundreds. There were tons of protests in Seattle where a group of a few dozen would go around marauding and looting and police would stand down and watch. Same here I guess.
- someperson 6y ago
  > I personally support killing rioters (of both political wings), but that is not palatable anymore. That's incredibly scary you hold that view: You're suggesting massacring protesters who are only causing property damage. Tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray are the way to disperse mobs/protesters/rioters from causing excessive property damage. Of course if some protesters started shooting people then obviously using lethal force might be required.
  - sershe 6y ago
    Yeah, I should have clarified that other effective means of dispersal/incapacitation are also acceptable. However, I believe Draco of Athens was right about this in particular, so I don't personally think there's a difference.
openasocket 6y ago
The main issue is that this isn't what the Capitol police are optimized for. They are meant to handle the run-of-the-mill protesters, and prepare for an active shooter or bomb threat. A mob of people breaking in is very different. Handguns are much less useful when you've got 20 people breaking through the windows. You can't try to arrest one of them without being swarmed by the others, and if you end up firing a shot the crowd will panic and attack you and you simply don't have enough firepower or distance. To defend against a mob, you need many more officers (enough to stand side by side at relevant choke points) equipped with riot gear and tear gas to disperse the crowd. And then a Quick Reaction Force on standby with guns and nonlethal weapons who can reinforce any area where the mob is threatening to break through. Without the numbers and the right equipment for the situation, the mob was able to break through and then the priority had to become securing the congresspeople until sufficient force could arrive to help clear.
- giarc 6y ago
  We've all seen the side by side image comparison of the BLM protest response (guys in military get-up standing shoulder to shoulder on the steps) and the Trump "Stop The Steal" protest (a handful of cops). For whatever reason, they didn't think a group of angry protestors who said they were going to do this, would actually do this.
  - openasocket 6y ago
    Yeah, and you can bet there will be some very long and very serious investigations over this. Congress is plenty pissed off, and the Capitol Police work for them (I believe they technically are a part of the legislative branch, not the executive). And I think every law enforcement agent in the district should be ashamed of what happened. I should point out that the photo going around showing the difference between the BLM response and the response to this mob is of the DC national guard, not Capitol Police. The DC national guard was not mobilized when the rioting started yesterday. Apparently it was requested but the DoD had not approved it. You can bet there will be some investigations there, and people involved will try to hide themselves in the bureaucracy and pointing fingers. My bet is that, in a year or two, we'll see some serious reforms in this area. Probably an expedited procedure for mobilizing the DC National Guard, or Congress will be so angry they will demand an expansion of the Capitol Police force, since that force works directly for them.
Consultant32452 6y ago
One thing that's not security theater is if you try to get into the room where the VP and Congress are you will be shot in the face (neck). Taking a podium or making a mess of some paperwork isn't all that meaningful. I think it shows that the security professionals have it figured out.

ReaganFJones 6y ago

I'm not sure if it could be largely characterized as security theater. The videos from the Capitol demonstrate just how outmatched the police were: https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233 https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233 There were clear examples of failures like the police letting them in or taking selfies with them. We'll see what oversight gets applied to the Capitol police... https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/capitol-riots-police-firings-455698 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/capitol-riots-polic...

preommr 6y ago
> The videos from the Capitol demonstrate just how outmatched the police were Not sure if I understand the point you're trying to make. They shouldn't have been outmatched in the first place. The protest was planned and the information was extremely overt. Something went horribly wrong for this to happen.
- sterlind 6y ago
  Any one of those protestors could have brought in a bomb. They weren't exactly going through metal detectors. Given that a pipe bomb was found at the RNC, and a suspicious package of some sort at the DNC, I'm surprised someone didn't try. I wonder how worried security there was about explosive devices and weighing whether to open fire.
  - zionic 6y ago
    And yet they didn’t. Consider the implications of that
    - Shared404 6y ago
      There was someone arrested with materials for Molotov cocktails. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
      - macawfish 6y ago
        I believe there were full on bombs found, as in IEDs with electronic parts.
    - munk-a 6y ago
      There were two IEDs discovered in the capital today - neither in the state house but still... super bad for security.
      - Natsu 6y ago
        One of those was at the RNC, I haven't heard of the other one yet.
    - morsch 6y ago
      We're at the stage where we're giving out merit awards for not bombing a seat of government after having stormed it?
  - seanp2k2 6y ago
    Many of them were also carrying guns. No idea who thought it'd be a good idea to just stand down and let them in, but my guess is that making martyrs of them would push us closer to something like the beginning of a civil war.
- krapp 6y ago
  Nothing went wrong. The police overwhelmingly support Trump, they were complicit.
- munk-a 6y ago
  At least according to NYT[1] it seems like the police being outmatched was rather intentional. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-protests/trump-rebuffed-initial-requests-to-deploy-the-national-guard-to-the-capitol-pence-gave-the-go-ahead https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-pro...
- smolder 6y ago
  The police seem to have stood down because they are sympathetic. There's video circulating of the rioters being let through barricades by the officers manning them. I'll say it's plausible they were not prepared to resist the crowd, but the way it looks is like they wanted to participate.
quasse 6y ago
>outmatched I wouldn't say that's even a fair characterization. Per the capitol police website they have 2,600 officers and a budget of $460 million. It honestly just ... didn't look like they were trying very hard. They managed to arrest what, 14 people? Compare that to the BLM protests on the west coast where unmarked vans of feds were literally rolling up and black bagging people off the street. USCP is charged with protecting Congress, and I think members of congress should be thinking hard about whether the police were complicit in what happened today. [1] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/uscp-fast-facts https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/uscp-fast-facts
- zionic 6y ago
  Your media consumption bias is showing. It took months of weekly action for a few feds to show up last summer
  - wtallis 6y ago
    The standards for response time ought to be rather higher for a large police force that exists primarily to protect a single building complex. And then there's the fact that the Capitol is obviously a much higher-profile target than a random federal courthouse.
- xienze 6y ago
  > Compare that to the BLM protests on the west coast where unmarked vans of feds were literally rolling up and black bagging people off the street. Boy, I wonder if the fact that these guys basically just goofed around and took pictures instead of burning down the capitol (like what happened in the Portland courthouse) had any bearing on that.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    That appears to be related to competency, not intentions. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
  - 6y ago
gibolt 6y ago
They had weapons (lethal and non-lethal) and decided not to use them, even though they were well within their right (and probably duty) to do so.
- xienze 6y ago
  Did you miss the young woman who was shot and killed?
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    We still don't know who fired that shot, and there were no reports of shots fired otherwise. Given the scope of what happened, a single lethal shot fired is kind of a miracle. And shocking given how many injuries and deaths we saw from protests earlier in the year which were under far better control, with far more law enforcement involved.
    - guscost 6y ago
      There were concealed guns everywhere on both sides this time, so not as surprising to me. Nobody wanted to start a bloodbath.
    - seanp2k2 6y ago
      If you poke around a bit on YouTube, there are multiple videos of it happening on there. My guess is that the woman was trying to get into a corridor that the Secret Service was protecting, and they really didn't want anyone in there. Capitol Police seemed unaware of this as a few of them armed with long guns stood on the same side of the door literally right next to the woman who was shot, when she was shot after trying to enter through that broken window.
    - ibejoeb 6y ago
      > D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee confirmed late Wednesday that Babbit was shot by a Capitol police officer https://www.fox5dc.com/news/woman-shot-killed-after-pro-trump-protesters-charged-us-capitol-identified https://www.fox5dc.com/news/woman-shot-killed-after-pro-trum...
OminousWeapons 6y ago
Out of curiosity, are there general best practices for dealing with a sudden, massive loss of access control like this?
- throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
  Run through the other exit if there's still time, and take the time to hide your id card so it's not visible. You don't want to be lynched.
rasz 6y ago
Outmatched or just letting people in? Mixed messages in this video, some cops standing ground while others just deciding to remove themselves from the post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ9oThRuMVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ9oThRuMVs
gonzo41 6y ago
Any cop that took a selfie should face charges along with the rioters. That's crazy. But the systemic failure was the lack of support from the President himself and the deployment of the national guard.
- splintercell 6y ago
  Wait, why? You want cops to be more like stoic stormtroopers? If every cop out there took a selfie with rioters, it would have been easier to manage them by a degree. Imagine hundreds of selfies with cops were posted in right wing social media, how will that not make right wing protestors have a nicer attitude towards the cop in the future? what's really the downside of letting this happen? Not focused on crowd control? This is also crowd control.
  - gonzo41 6y ago
    As demonstrated by the mobs actions, they weren't there to protest. They were there to wreck the joint. The cops let their guard down. It's silly to think that being chummy with the crowd would deescalate them when they've been prepping for this for ages.
    - ghthor 6y ago
      If they were there to wreck the joint, it would have been wrecked. From what I saw many protestors were stopping the anarchist from causing any real damage.
  - enumjorge 6y ago
    If this is how cops de-escalate then it’s a massive double standard to how they dealt with protesters over the summer, including the time they tear gassed peaceful protesters to make way for Trump’s photo op right there on DC in June [0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
megameter 6y ago
Riot cops are regularly outnumbered. They are trained to use less-lethals to outmanuever, disperse and kettle crowds like this. They had advance warning and could have dispersed the early crowds. It was just this past summer that Trump had a crowd near the White House dispersed with tear gas to give a speech where he held a Bible upside down. But when the time came today, there were no tear gas or 40mm rounds, no LRAD. The security simply didn't show up when the expected crowd was percieved to be aligned with the police. This is a consistent pattern throughout our law enforcement system.
- rasz 6y ago
  There was at least one LRAD Humvee parked out front with mob jumping on its roof. Someone made a decision not to use it.

deleted 6y ago

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seventytwo 6y ago

I wonder why there wasn’t more security given this protest was known, and literally all of congress was in session.

tolbish 6y ago
Based on today's event, why would you think that they wanted to stop these rioters? Security was taking selfies with them.
- bostik 6y ago
  Not just that. Based on the reports, some of the rioters were carrying blue lives matter flags. I would say it's pretty obvious there were shared sympathies between the mob and those protecting the Capitol. Being overrun by attackers is one thing. Ignoring them would be dereliction of duty. But assisting and siding with them? I don't even know what you'd call that anymore.
bublyboi 6y ago
Didn’t the mayor of DC literally request that the feds NOT provide federal agents due to experiences with the BLM protests? She probably saved many lives with that decision. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532739-bowser-to-doj-pentagon-dc-isnt-requesting-federal-law-enforcement-to?amp https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532739-bowser-to...
- matham 6y ago
  Sure, but there's a difference between coming with riot gear and attacking protestors, and posting 10 cops to guard all of congress and then have them walk away when protestors show up leaving the doors wide open. They could have easily guarded the building itself. Close the doors and post 30 guards at each entrance?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Interestingly, everything I read today said that they did request assistance. A day or two ago. It just took until the events unfolded for anything to happen. A very quick Google search turned up: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/urging-calm-dc-mayor-calls-national-guard-protests-75038523 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/urging-calm-dc-may...

adventured 6y ago

We saw the same thing during the Kavanaugh protests. The protestors were able to gain access to several locations in Federal buildings that they weren't supposed to be in. Nothing was changed to improve security, rather stupidly. During both Kavanaugh and the BLM / Antifa protests members of Congress were repeatedly threatened with death and or general physical violence (eg Rand Paul, a pacifist, being surrounded by a hyper violent mob and having to be shielded by half a dozen police officers as the mob tried to attack him and his family), little appears to have been modified to adjust for the atmosphere of increasing partisan violence that is enfulging the US. It's obvious what that's going to inevitably result in unless some appropriate security steps are taken. The partisan violence will get dramatically worse this decade as the sides split further apart. Some people foolishly think Biden is the end of it; Trump was only a symptom of what's happening, which is the beginning of a cultural civil war (the two major political sides in the US have absolutely nothing in common now), and increasingly intense acts of violence will go along with that.

8note 6y ago
True pacisfism isn't not congruent with his capitalist leanings. Rand Paul is someone who's very ok with the police beating up and killing black people, so it makes sense that they'd be yelling at him
dhruvdh 6y ago
I would say that both sides do have common ground, where common ground is lacking is mostly between politicians and the lower/middle class.
wolverine876 6y ago
Can you cite bases for these claims and characterizations? Nobody has stormed the Capitol and violently disrupted Congress since the war of 1812, as I understand it. Certainly I've never seen anything like it. I don't agree that the protests described are remotely the same, nor with the characterization of the summer protests as "BLM/Antifa". I saw plenty of massive BLM protests, zero Antifa except occasionally on TV. It's like calling Redmond WA the town of Microsoft / Joe's Diner. The idea that it's both sides and civil war is coming is certainly a claim of the militant right wing that seeks violence. Nobody else says it that I know of.

bmitc 6y ago

I was really disappointed and disheartened. It showed great weakness. I recently watched the movie Olympus Has Fallen. We were just wanting a dumb action movie to pass the time. The North Korean terrorists just basically walked in and took the White House. We were like, how stupid is that, no way that could really happen. And here today, we literally saw it happen. People took over one of our nation’s most important buildings with extremely high level people in it without a sweat, without resistance, and basically without repercussions. I remarked today to my family that I bet Russians and North Koreans were watching going, wait, we can just walk in? Of course they couldn’t because they aren’t white “Americans”. And all of this really paints a nasty picture of what happened today. It was a soup of treason, violence, white privilege, disgrace, sadness, and weakness. I mean, a bomb on the grounds was found and detonated by a bomb squad and people were still allowed to stay on the premises. I really could not believe how they could just take over the place. I even saw a video where police actually just opened the gates for them.

clintonb 6y ago
The bomb was found at RNC headquarters, a few blocks away from the Capitol, not the Capitol itself.
- bmitc 6y ago
  [An article I read said] There was an additional bomb also found on the Capitol grounds. Obviously this is a developing situation. And the details don’t actually matter to my point. Clear and present evidence to commit acts of domestic terrorism was available, and people were still allowed to loiter and vandalize as they pleased.
  - xienze 6y ago
    No, the DNC (well, it’s speculated). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/pipe-bomb-rnc...
    - 6y ago

dzdt 6y ago

Police take orders from above. Clearly the order of the day was to have minimal presence and avoid conflict with the protesters.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
What makes it clear to you that this was an order and not the result of incompetence?
- runarberg 6y ago
  e.g. comparison to similarly sized BLM protests
  - curryst 6y ago
    Part of me wonders if this was malicious compliance with the demands to downsize police. "You want less police? See what happens?" That doesn't seem beyond belief.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      Don’t attribute ignorance which can be safely explained by malice I think it is much more likely that this downsizing had everything to do with who the protestors were—i.e. their political views and skin color—in each case.
- colordrops 6y ago
  The police are overwhelmingly Trump supporters, and the comparison to the response to BLM protests is stark: https://twitter.com/Tender_oni/status/1346916038269689862?s=19 https://twitter.com/Tender_oni/status/1346916038269689862?s=... https://twitter.com/theangiestanton/status/1346956067301941249?s=19 https://twitter.com/theangiestanton/status/13469560673019412... Edit: anyone want to respond about what's wrong with my comment rather than arbitrarily down voting?
  - 6y ago

xienze 6y ago

You mean a courthouse in Portland being burned down during the summer didn’t already shake your faith in the security of our federal buildings? And I’m not sure if people are aware but the capitol is a public building. Meaning, on a normal day anyone can just go in there. There wouldn’t have been the physical intrusion everyone is catching the vapors over if they hadn’t put up barriers and shut down the whole city in the first place. You know, I’m actually starting to understand that whole argument about how preemptive shows of force by the police can actually escalate a situation...

dboreham 6y ago
Hmm. I've been in the capitol building. From memory you can't just waltz in there like it's grand central station.
coddingtonbear 6y ago
As a person who lives in Portland, I can tell you “burned down” is an incredible exaggeration. Somebody did set a desk on fire, though.

vinni2 6y ago

Isn’t this lapse in security somehow intentional? Most likely ordered by Trump not to interfere or he intentionally weakened the security.

brobdingnagians 6y ago
Or ordered by someone else so that they could call it an attempted coup.

tsimionescu 6y ago

I think it was obvious from everything we've seen, especially in comparison to the recent protests, that the police response was deliberately small. Whether they received orders to allow the protesters in, whether they themselves decided to do it, whether they were denied reinforcements - its obvious that something caused police response to be almost non-existent to an obvious threat. If there had been a BLM rally instead of a MAGA rally on the steps of the capitol the day the election is certified, they would have been kept well away from the building with riot gear.

craftinator 6y ago
> If there had been a BLM rally instead of a MAGA rally on the steps of the capitol the day the election is certified, they would have been kept well away from the building with riot gear. Living in Portland, I had this same thought. Random one way streets in downtown Portland get a much more violent, immediate, and overwhelming police response on a nightly basis than the Capitol building did when there was an obvious riot forming. If it had been a BLM rally, the tear-gas would have started before any protester had made it up the steps, the same way it still happens in Portland. What a fucked up country I live in.

sershe 6y ago

Well, how were they supposed to prevent it? I personally support killing rioters (of both political wings), but that is not palatable anymore. The building is not exactly and armored bunker. If they don't use force, there's quite literally nothing they can do to secure it. The same reason you can almost never win conventional wars in enemy territory anymore (that one might be for the best, but true nonetheless).

nepeckman 6y ago
We spent all summer watching as police subjected peaceful protesters to violent methods of crowd control. Why were there no rubber bullets, tear gas, etc? When BLM marched in DC, there were more armed guards in front of the Lincoln memorial than in front of the Capitol building yesterday. This was absolutely preventable.
- sershe 6y ago
  First, there was tear gas, and in fact there were rioter(s?) shot by police. Then, you are comparing one protest to hundreds. There were tons of protests in Seattle where a group of a few dozen would go around marauding and looting and police would stand down and watch. Same here I guess.
someperson 6y ago
> I personally support killing rioters (of both political wings), but that is not palatable anymore. That's incredibly scary you hold that view: You're suggesting massacring protesters who are only causing property damage. Tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray are the way to disperse mobs/protesters/rioters from causing excessive property damage. Of course if some protesters started shooting people then obviously using lethal force might be required.
- sershe 6y ago
  Yeah, I should have clarified that other effective means of dispersal/incapacitation are also acceptable. However, I believe Draco of Athens was right about this in particular, so I don't personally think there's a difference.

openasocket 6y ago

The main issue is that this isn't what the Capitol police are optimized for. They are meant to handle the run-of-the-mill protesters, and prepare for an active shooter or bomb threat. A mob of people breaking in is very different. Handguns are much less useful when you've got 20 people breaking through the windows. You can't try to arrest one of them without being swarmed by the others, and if you end up firing a shot the crowd will panic and attack you and you simply don't have enough firepower or distance. To defend against a mob, you need many more officers (enough to stand side by side at relevant choke points) equipped with riot gear and tear gas to disperse the crowd. And then a Quick Reaction Force on standby with guns and nonlethal weapons who can reinforce any area where the mob is threatening to break through. Without the numbers and the right equipment for the situation, the mob was able to break through and then the priority had to become securing the congresspeople until sufficient force could arrive to help clear.

giarc 6y ago
We've all seen the side by side image comparison of the BLM protest response (guys in military get-up standing shoulder to shoulder on the steps) and the Trump "Stop The Steal" protest (a handful of cops). For whatever reason, they didn't think a group of angry protestors who said they were going to do this, would actually do this.
- openasocket 6y ago
  Yeah, and you can bet there will be some very long and very serious investigations over this. Congress is plenty pissed off, and the Capitol Police work for them (I believe they technically are a part of the legislative branch, not the executive). And I think every law enforcement agent in the district should be ashamed of what happened. I should point out that the photo going around showing the difference between the BLM response and the response to this mob is of the DC national guard, not Capitol Police. The DC national guard was not mobilized when the rioting started yesterday. Apparently it was requested but the DoD had not approved it. You can bet there will be some investigations there, and people involved will try to hide themselves in the bureaucracy and pointing fingers. My bet is that, in a year or two, we'll see some serious reforms in this area. Probably an expedited procedure for mobilizing the DC National Guard, or Congress will be so angry they will demand an expansion of the Capitol Police force, since that force works directly for them.

Consultant32452 6y ago

One thing that's not security theater is if you try to get into the room where the VP and Congress are you will be shot in the face (neck). Taking a podium or making a mess of some paperwork isn't all that meaningful. I think it shows that the security professionals have it figured out.