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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://twit

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.

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.