A bit orchestrated? To show the less radical Trump supporters, this is what your president is responsible for, chaos and anarchy in the capitol. Disturbing the democratic process.
But I guess, don't assume evil, what can be explained with incompetence.
This could've been prevented if the president (1) didn't incite this and (2) didn't deny national guard to step-in.
So what's left is the capitol police facing a mob invited by the president, without backup. And they stated they had two choices, barricade the capitol and prevent entry, or evacuate the people inside.
It could've gotten ugly if the people in the capitol got overrun, e.g. Pelosi facing people that think they're sent by Q to fight off a satanic coup by Pelosi, but they got evacuated to safety. Apparently capitol police chose to evacuate rather than to barricade, in hindsight that's clearly the least risky option to human health. If they break through with nobody inside, that's not as bad if they break through anyway with people inside. A bunch of idiots roaming the capitol building isn't a threat per se, shameful and sad yes, but not one that should've been met with violent force from a small number of capitol police at the expense of (and risk of not) evacuating the people inside.
Of course, if the mob were leftists or had any significant amount of minorities mixed in, there would have been rivers of blood outside the Capitol.
Can someone explain why the people trained in handling civilians, ie the police in the capital of the united states, is not enough in order to secure a building?
A large protest can have 100,000-500,000 protesters [1]
So even if 95% of protesters are peaceful, a mere 5% inclined towards disorder can easily outnumber the local police. So it's not so crazy they'd need to call backup from somewhere. Why it's so common to deploy the national guard rather than cops from other nearby jurisdictions I don't know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_in_the_United... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Police_Department... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
Even the most self-sufficient of cities would find their cops outnumbered in such a situation.
"Nope, can't do that, not enough timeslices on mutex semaphore of a monadic type for me to transpile that functionality of changing the color of the background"
This seems really strange to me. So the capitol police isn't staffed and doesn’t plan for a situation where they need to do both of these things?
What struck me the most is that the rioters seem like just a few hundred/thousand. Definitely scary but should have been able to be controlled by law enforcement. It wasn’t a million people or a zombie horde.
Their web site [0] says they have 2,300 officers and staff. So even if only half are officers it seems like 1,150 armed, trained capitol police should be able to control a mob of this size.
Certainly rioters trying to stage a coup is a rare event but seems like something that the capitol police should have contingency plans for.
Them saying that they had to choose between evacuating lawmakers and protecting the building seems like they need a lot of help planning.
That’s what I mean about odd that they don’t have a plan for this. I live near a top 50 city and the local police has crowd control equipment. Seems like the National capitol police would have some capability for this.
Certainly not shooting everyone.
Then there would be the question, of why there was no riot gear, when riots or riot-like situation could be expected. And since this was a planned event - and protestors openly planned to storm it - then maybe there should have been some better preparation?
And crowd control is indeed tricky, but it is still standard procedure for police.
You have fences.
You have lines of strong policemen with shields and tonfa.
You have tear gas.
Watercannon.
Beanbag.
Taser.
And ultimately, if rioters are indeed shooting or preparing to do so: there are guns with the police, too.
Many others brought the point: there probably would have been rivers of blood, if the black life matters movement, would have tried to storm the capitol.
But was this not known?
The FBI could not bring more people in?
But yes, could also very well explained by, "they would not really dare it" preparation.
He can certainly influece it, but did he? If not, who is responsible for the lack of defensive preparations, the local police? The FBI?
DC is not a state, it’s a district under federal control. There is a mayor and a police department, but responsibilities that would normally fall to a state-level government are handled federally.
This is a contentious issue in the US right now, because it means that the residents do not have representation in the house and senate.
Further, the insurrectionists were definitely armed, at least five guns were seized from among those arrested.
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/13-arrested-5-weapons-reco...
From Merriam-Webster
Armed protestors invaded the Capitol intent on disrupting the government from certifying an election. This was quite literally an insurrection.
In the case of Washington, DC they are not. The mayor has a normal municipal police force and the president has control over the equivalent of the state-level force, which would usually be called for such an incident. The Capitol specifically also has another force, independent from the municipal police, which is federally controlled.
There are numerous reports Trump explicitly refused to allow the National Guard to respond; governors of two adjacent states mobilized their state forces instead, and eventually Pence also mobilized the DC guard, which it's not really clear he had the authority to do (or if he does, also the authority to issue orders contravening Trump's refusal).