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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

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.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  If it is reasonable to assume that some individual members of the police force are sympathetic to the Q/Boogaloo cause, who is to say the person responsible for coordinating with the Pentagon wasn't a fellow traveler? Police forces, on the whole aren't exactly politically neutral: during primary season, I recall a republican politician getting a picture taken with a policeman who had a "Q" patch on his uniform. There is not enough information to come to either conclusion, but I would like to think the DC police leadership didn't/doesn't plumb those depths of incompetence. The public (and congress) deserves answers on what happened and why.
  - astura 6y ago
    >I recall a republican politician getting a picture taken with a policeman who had a "Q" patch on his uniform. This picture? https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pence_posing_with_QAnon_police_crop.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pence_posing_with_...
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      Yes - that's the one, thank you.
  - smcl 6y ago
    They definitely deserve answers, you are right. But jumping to "This was an op and the DC police as a unit were in on it" is approaching wheelhouse of the crazies who instigated this whole debacle. That runaway cascade of believing lots of little things that could be possible is what led to millions believing in dumb stuff like Mole Children being kept as slaves by Hillary Clinton and friends. Unless something more sinister emerges the simplest explanation is probably the best - there some cops who are far-right sympathisers and there are incompetently managed and organized Police forces. Both of those things are already demonstrably true and explain how the response quite well without introducing a grand conspiracy.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      I was careful to say individuals - my point was that there is no reason to doubt the possibility of those sympathetic individual(s) being decision-makers in the force. I was careful to not suggest it was a group decision. However, it is no secret that the FBI has long-reported (2006!) on white-supremecist infiltration of police forces[1] - this is not crazy talk. If someone joined the police as a rookie in 2006 to enforce their personal agenda, how far up the leadership hierarchy would they be now? 1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
- plussed_reader 6y ago
  I'm not so certain; with the possibility of installed loyalists and/or 'regulatory capture' we may have intentional malfeasance to make a troubling situation worse.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q This is worrying in its own terms. Policemen are adult, and shouldn't believe in fairy tales. Being able to use deductive reasoning, understand basic principles of science (like the difference between cheratine and DNA), double-check the facts, and find the truth between the lies is THE work of the police. Somebody unable to see a hole for years in theories that most 5 Yo curious children could dismantle in a hour is unfit for this kind of work. They simply shouldn't be policemen. Period. Will end distroying the lifes of innocent people.
cperciva 6y ago
They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower Hmm, why turn down an offer of assistance from a military whose commander-in-chief wants to overturn the election? I can think of a few reasons...
- sangnoir 6y ago
  I'm curious - what are those reasons, and how would the lack of an invitation thwart them?
  - cperciva 6y ago
    Most obviously, if you invite the military in and ask them to secure a portion of the building, you're exposed to the risk that the commander-in-chief will order them out (or order them to stand aside); it's unlikely that forces could be redeployed fast enough to respond to such a defection. (And no, you can't avoid this danger by having all the forces working together everywhere; far too many command-and-control issues arise.) If you don't invite the military to assist in the first place... well, then you're not relying on them to guard your back. There's also a fundamental democratic issue at stake: It's not by coincidence that the United States Capitol Police answers to the legislature and not to the executive -- indeed, this is seen around the world (e.g. Canada's Parliamentary Protective Service answers to the Speakers of the House and Senate) and arguably the principle that military forces should not be brought to the seat of legislative power dates back to the Roman Republic... which swiftly became the Roman Empire after Caesar crossed the Rubicon with an army at his back.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      Those are all valid points. Though I will argue that the assumption that the Capitol Police answers to the legislature is shaky, at best (in practice). If I had to guess who is more likely to refuse an unlawful order, I'd say a member of the military, rather than the police, based on my limited knowledge of their respective cultures. Combined with the idea of police officers who believe they are part of a semi-secret, ad-hoc, patriot's army, things can go wrong indeed. Let's do a thought experiment: let's say there are a few elements in the police who are active QAnon believers, sprinkled in at various levels. Let's also assume some more force members are not believers, per se, but sympathize with the cause, and are willing to look aside since they may dislike some legislators who they see as enabling BLM, Antifa and other un-American actors (in their eyes) and believe that something "weird" happened with the elections and/or the whole establishment is dirty. Would these individuals not listen to the orders of the commander in chief, even when not delivered via the official chain of command?

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.
sangnoir 6y ago
If it is reasonable to assume that some individual members of the police force are sympathetic to the Q/Boogaloo cause, who is to say the person responsible for coordinating with the Pentagon wasn't a fellow traveler? Police forces, on the whole aren't exactly politically neutral: during primary season, I recall a republican politician getting a picture taken with a policeman who had a "Q" patch on his uniform. There is not enough information to come to either conclusion, but I would like to think the DC police leadership didn't/doesn't plumb those depths of incompetence. The public (and congress) deserves answers on what happened and why.
- astura 6y ago
  >I recall a republican politician getting a picture taken with a policeman who had a "Q" patch on his uniform. This picture? https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pence_posing_with_QAnon_police_crop.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pence_posing_with_...
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Yes - that's the one, thank you.
- smcl 6y ago
  They definitely deserve answers, you are right. But jumping to "This was an op and the DC police as a unit were in on it" is approaching wheelhouse of the crazies who instigated this whole debacle. That runaway cascade of believing lots of little things that could be possible is what led to millions believing in dumb stuff like Mole Children being kept as slaves by Hillary Clinton and friends. Unless something more sinister emerges the simplest explanation is probably the best - there some cops who are far-right sympathisers and there are incompetently managed and organized Police forces. Both of those things are already demonstrably true and explain how the response quite well without introducing a grand conspiracy.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    I was careful to say individuals - my point was that there is no reason to doubt the possibility of those sympathetic individual(s) being decision-makers in the force. I was careful to not suggest it was a group decision. However, it is no secret that the FBI has long-reported (2006!) on white-supremecist infiltration of police forces[1] - this is not crazy talk. If someone joined the police as a rookie in 2006 to enforce their personal agenda, how far up the leadership hierarchy would they be now? 1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
plussed_reader 6y ago
I'm not so certain; with the possibility of installed loyalists and/or 'regulatory capture' we may have intentional malfeasance to make a troubling situation worse.
pvaldes 6y ago
> it's pretty well known that individuals within the police could identify or sympathise with Q This is worrying in its own terms. Policemen are adult, and shouldn't believe in fairy tales. Being able to use deductive reasoning, understand basic principles of science (like the difference between cheratine and DNA), double-check the facts, and find the truth between the lies is THE work of the police. Somebody unable to see a hole for years in theories that most 5 Yo curious children could dismantle in a hour is unfit for this kind of work. They simply shouldn't be policemen. Period. Will end distroying the lifes of innocent people.

cperciva 6y ago

They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower Hmm, why turn down an offer of assistance from a military whose commander-in-chief wants to overturn the election? I can think of a few reasons...

sangnoir 6y ago
I'm curious - what are those reasons, and how would the lack of an invitation thwart them?
- cperciva 6y ago
  Most obviously, if you invite the military in and ask them to secure a portion of the building, you're exposed to the risk that the commander-in-chief will order them out (or order them to stand aside); it's unlikely that forces could be redeployed fast enough to respond to such a defection. (And no, you can't avoid this danger by having all the forces working together everywhere; far too many command-and-control issues arise.) If you don't invite the military to assist in the first place... well, then you're not relying on them to guard your back. There's also a fundamental democratic issue at stake: It's not by coincidence that the United States Capitol Police answers to the legislature and not to the executive -- indeed, this is seen around the world (e.g. Canada's Parliamentary Protective Service answers to the Speakers of the House and Senate) and arguably the principle that military forces should not be brought to the seat of legislative power dates back to the Roman Republic... which swiftly became the Roman Empire after Caesar crossed the Rubicon with an army at his back.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Those are all valid points. Though I will argue that the assumption that the Capitol Police answers to the legislature is shaky, at best (in practice). If I had to guess who is more likely to refuse an unlawful order, I'd say a member of the military, rather than the police, based on my limited knowledge of their respective cultures. Combined with the idea of police officers who believe they are part of a semi-secret, ad-hoc, patriot's army, things can go wrong indeed. Let's do a thought experiment: let's say there are a few elements in the police who are active QAnon believers, sprinkled in at various levels. Let's also assume some more force members are not believers, per se, but sympathize with the cause, and are willing to look aside since they may dislike some legislators who they see as enabling BLM, Antifa and other un-American actors (in their eyes) and believe that something "weird" happened with the elections and/or the whole establishment is dirty. Would these individuals not listen to the orders of the commander in chief, even when not delivered via the official chain of command?