6 ms·

They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.

callmeal 6y ago
>They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people. I think it's pretty clear at this point that they would have been overstaffed if the protestors had a different skin color.
- opinion-is-bad 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s clear at all. I’ve seen it often repeated by the media, but there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Repeating this is only driving the two sides further apart.
- tclancy 6y ago
  Username checks out -- if you can't see this to be obvious based on this summer, one of us is struggling with reality.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  > different skin color. In the 1970s, armed Black Panther members took the California State Capitol and no one died. At least one officer is dead (this changes daily so who knows) and one protestor (she was unarmed, that's a protestor, trespasser at best) was shot by sorry excuse of a Capitol Officer who shot wildly into a crowd (almost hitting the other Federal Officer behind her!) Please stop making this about race.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    You're not a protester if you are breaking into congress, breaking past a barricade, being told to stop, and walking towards an officer pointing his gun at you. You're suicidal.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      But, they let these people in: https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234 https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234
      - deathgrips 6y ago
        Should've shot them too if they refused to back down
  - giantrobot 6y ago
    The lady that was shot was attempting to enter a hallway through a window while people in the hallway were pointing guns at her. Just because she didn't have a visible weapon doesn't mean she wasn't a threat. Climbing through a broken window into a hallway protected by a makeshift barricade is itself a threatening action. No one at the head of a mob climbing over a barricade ever did so for innocent and non-threatening reasons. Suggesting otherwise is ludicrously stupid. Having seen multiple videos of the event it's clear the shooter was not firing wildly into the crowd. They were aiming specifically at the person trying to break into the area. She's dead because of her own actions.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Let's step back to before this happened. Why did the Capitol Police let people in: https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234 https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234
    - wrycoder 6y ago
      Note that she was wearing a good sized backpack. The shooter was wearing plainclothes- possibly Secret Service. It appears he was protecting something or someone important. Pence?
      - jsjohnst 6y ago
        Pence would not have been in the House Lobby area, he would've been taken directly from the Senate to a secure area.
sangnoir 6y ago
They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower, days before the protest. Why? A police department with an intelligence unit couldn't guess that things might get a little out of hand when 3 weeks before, the President publicly used Twitter to ask his followers[1] to attend a "wild" protest on January 6th? Not that an intelligence unit was required as the plans were in the open. I have great difficulty in putting this down to incompetence, all things considered. 1. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340185773220515840 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13401857732205158...
- smcl 6y ago
  For this specific decision I think we can put it down to incompetence over malice - it'd presumably be easy for whoever was co-ordinating it dismiss all the riot talks as bluster and figure it'd just be yet another protest with a lot of shouting. I imagine we'll hear more about it, but I would be surprised if it was a co-ordinated effort in concert with the rioters (I don't know what to call them). The footage of police opening barriers and stuff, and taking selfies is however a bit more worrying. I think it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q or the far right - so if it turns out that this footage was exactly what it's seems to be (and we know how easily things can be misrepresented and shown out of context) then I imagine some cops are gonna be in big trouble.
  - c22 6y ago
    I agree with this take. It's possible that after a year of particularly intense criticism of police department's actions vs protesters across the country they didn't want to appear to be over-reacting (which could fan all kinds of flames) and didn't expect the crowds to be quite so wild. I don't know what kinds of contingency planning may have taken place, but ultimately this event seems to have been ended and cleaned up pretty quickly compared to some other demonstrations we've seen recently.
    - smcl 6y ago
      Yeah we're definitely in speculation territory here so I'm wary of going too far. But I would imagine it was not a conscious attempt clean up their act and do their job with a less heavy hand. The idea that they'd suddenly decide to have a change of heart and that the first people who encountered this new, soft-touch policing happened to be right wingers - I don't buy it.
labster 6y ago
Being understaffed on a day when protesters have warned you they may take direct action is incompetence or complicity. They have agreements with nearby law enforcement who are often deputized in DC, yet didn’t activate those agreements until the perimeter had been fully breached.
35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
This can be correct, but so can GPs point: two possible findings are that the capitol police were deliberately left understaffed because * higher level leadership judged the threat of the protestors to be insignificant (incompetence) * higher level leadership wanted the potential for a mob to enter the building (complicity) However they found themselves in the position, they did, and once there I think they had an unenviable task. And the fact that the occupants of the building were safely sheltered until a larger force came to clear the building shows that they made a good decision.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Except for that part where they murdered an unarmed Air Force veteran.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    It's not murder if it's legal. If you don't want to get shot, don't invade the seat of government during a constitutionally prescribed transition of power, break through a barricade, ignore a cop's orders and approach a cop pointing his gun at you. Hard, I know.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      And you assume that's everything that happened? Did she break through a barrier? People were walking right in.You don't know which group she cam in with. In the various videos, she was trying to get out. They all were. The dude who fired the shot, are you really defending him? A man with no real reasonable threat to his life? None of the people in that shot were shown to be armed. Honest question, what are your views on Jacob Blake? Do you defend him? Because he sexually assaulted a women who had a restraining order against him, ignored police orders to stop, got up after being tazed twice and reached into a car with children. The DA found the police were completely justified in shooting him 7 times in the back. This is the double standard. If you say she had no excuse for getting shot, than neither did Jacob Blake, or Breyanna Taylor.
aleksandrm 6y ago
Incorrect. Capitol police is a 2300 officer department with a huge annual budget. The puppets in place were complicit in letting this happen.
- 1234letshaveatw 6y ago
  To what end? Certainly the Capitol police leadership wasn't part of some conspiracy to overthrow the government- letting a few hundred protestors in wouldn't accomplish much. So you are saying that the Capitol police succeeded in creating a honeypot that was meant to embarrass Trump?
justin66 6y ago
> They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people. This is all true but might be crediting the Capitol Police leadership with a little more coordination and planning than they truly exhibited. There were clearly some law enforcement officers who did not simply step aside and let the rioters have their way once lawmakers had been evacuated. Based on some of the comments here I get the feeling it's not common knowledge yet that at least one involved law enforcement officer has died [1] and a couple of dozen were injured. Possibly they could have done better for themselves if they'd all been as easygoing about things as the officers photographed in the rotunda. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sicknick-capitol-police-officer-dies/2021/01/08/5552e036-51bc-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sic...

callmeal 6y ago

>They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people. I think it's pretty clear at this point that they would have been overstaffed if the protestors had a different skin color.

opinion-is-bad 6y ago
I don’t think that’s clear at all. I’ve seen it often repeated by the media, but there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Repeating this is only driving the two sides further apart.
tclancy 6y ago
Username checks out -- if you can't see this to be obvious based on this summer, one of us is struggling with reality.
djsumdog 6y ago
> different skin color. In the 1970s, armed Black Panther members took the California State Capitol and no one died. At least one officer is dead (this changes daily so who knows) and one protestor (she was unarmed, that's a protestor, trespasser at best) was shot by sorry excuse of a Capitol Officer who shot wildly into a crowd (almost hitting the other Federal Officer behind her!) Please stop making this about race.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  You're not a protester if you are breaking into congress, breaking past a barricade, being told to stop, and walking towards an officer pointing his gun at you. You're suicidal.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    But, they let these people in: https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234 https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234
    - deathgrips 6y ago
      Should've shot them too if they refused to back down
- giantrobot 6y ago
  The lady that was shot was attempting to enter a hallway through a window while people in the hallway were pointing guns at her. Just because she didn't have a visible weapon doesn't mean she wasn't a threat. Climbing through a broken window into a hallway protected by a makeshift barricade is itself a threatening action. No one at the head of a mob climbing over a barricade ever did so for innocent and non-threatening reasons. Suggesting otherwise is ludicrously stupid. Having seen multiple videos of the event it's clear the shooter was not firing wildly into the crowd. They were aiming specifically at the person trying to break into the area. She's dead because of her own actions.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Let's step back to before this happened. Why did the Capitol Police let people in: https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234 https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234
  - wrycoder 6y ago
    Note that she was wearing a good sized backpack. The shooter was wearing plainclothes- possibly Secret Service. It appears he was protecting something or someone important. Pence?
    - jsjohnst 6y ago
      Pence would not have been in the House Lobby area, he would've been taken directly from the Senate to a secure area.

sangnoir 6y ago

They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower, days before the protest. Why? A police department with an intelligence unit couldn't guess that things might get a little out of hand when 3 weeks before, the President publicly used Twitter to ask his followers[1] to attend a "wild" protest on January 6th? Not that an intelligence unit was required as the plans were in the open. I have great difficulty in putting this down to incompetence, all things considered. 1. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340185773220515840 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13401857732205158...

smcl 6y ago
For this specific decision I think we can put it down to incompetence over malice - it'd presumably be easy for whoever was co-ordinating it dismiss all the riot talks as bluster and figure it'd just be yet another protest with a lot of shouting. I imagine we'll hear more about it, but I would be surprised if it was a co-ordinated effort in concert with the rioters (I don't know what to call them). The footage of police opening barriers and stuff, and taking selfies is however a bit more worrying. I think it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q or the far right - so if it turns out that this footage was exactly what it's seems to be (and we know how easily things can be misrepresented and shown out of context) then I imagine some cops are gonna be in big trouble.
- c22 6y ago
  I agree with this take. It's possible that after a year of particularly intense criticism of police department's actions vs protesters across the country they didn't want to appear to be over-reacting (which could fan all kinds of flames) and didn't expect the crowds to be quite so wild. I don't know what kinds of contingency planning may have taken place, but ultimately this event seems to have been ended and cleaned up pretty quickly compared to some other demonstrations we've seen recently.
  - smcl 6y ago
    Yeah we're definitely in speculation territory here so I'm wary of going too far. But I would imagine it was not a conscious attempt clean up their act and do their job with a less heavy hand. The idea that they'd suddenly decide to have a change of heart and that the first people who encountered this new, soft-touch policing happened to be right wingers - I don't buy it.

labster 6y ago

Being understaffed on a day when protesters have warned you they may take direct action is incompetence or complicity. They have agreements with nearby law enforcement who are often deputized in DC, yet didn’t activate those agreements until the perimeter had been fully breached.

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago

This can be correct, but so can GPs point: two possible findings are that the capitol police were deliberately left understaffed because * higher level leadership judged the threat of the protestors to be insignificant (incompetence) * higher level leadership wanted the potential for a mob to enter the building (complicity) However they found themselves in the position, they did, and once there I think they had an unenviable task. And the fact that the occupants of the building were safely sheltered until a larger force came to clear the building shows that they made a good decision.

djsumdog 6y ago
Except for that part where they murdered an unarmed Air Force veteran.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  It's not murder if it's legal. If you don't want to get shot, don't invade the seat of government during a constitutionally prescribed transition of power, break through a barricade, ignore a cop's orders and approach a cop pointing his gun at you. Hard, I know.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    And you assume that's everything that happened? Did she break through a barrier? People were walking right in.You don't know which group she cam in with. In the various videos, she was trying to get out. They all were. The dude who fired the shot, are you really defending him? A man with no real reasonable threat to his life? None of the people in that shot were shown to be armed. Honest question, what are your views on Jacob Blake? Do you defend him? Because he sexually assaulted a women who had a restraining order against him, ignored police orders to stop, got up after being tazed twice and reached into a car with children. The DA found the police were completely justified in shooting him 7 times in the back. This is the double standard. If you say she had no excuse for getting shot, than neither did Jacob Blake, or Breyanna Taylor.

aleksandrm 6y ago

Incorrect. Capitol police is a 2300 officer department with a huge annual budget. The puppets in place were complicit in letting this happen.

1234letshaveatw 6y ago
To what end? Certainly the Capitol police leadership wasn't part of some conspiracy to overthrow the government- letting a few hundred protestors in wouldn't accomplish much. So you are saying that the Capitol police succeeded in creating a honeypot that was meant to embarrass Trump?

justin66 6y ago

> They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people. This is all true but might be crediting the Capitol Police leadership with a little more coordination and planning than they truly exhibited. There were clearly some law enforcement officers who did not simply step aside and let the rioters have their way once lawmakers had been evacuated. Based on some of the comments here I get the feeling it's not common knowledge yet that at least one involved law enforcement officer has died [1] and a couple of dozen were injured. Possibly they could have done better for themselves if they'd all been as easygoing about things as the officers photographed in the rotunda. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sicknick-capitol-police-officer-dies/2021/01/08/5552e036-51bc-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sic...