Capitol Police rejected offers of federal help to quell rioting | Hacker News Reader

Capitol Police rejected offers of federal help to quell rioting

latimes.com

37 pointsAndrewBissell32 comments

Related to Cap police taking selfies with pre-rioters and opening the barriers for them and waving them in?

Completely. At this point its obvious there was collusion with elements of law enforcement. The bigger issue is that the FBI and DOJ have known for a while that many local law enforcement departments has been ideologically compromised by Right Extremism and doing nothing about it[0]

[0]https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

I forget whether it was leaked or not but I read an FBI report on this exact issue and there was a truly alarming amount of [censored to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation].

If this doesn't get snipped pretty quickly this is seriously "end of a society" material.

Black folks have been saying this for decades and yet white people are alarmed only when it threatens them directly

Well you can't expect too many left-leaning folks to become cops. Wielding gun all the time, bringing law & order is more a far right nut fantasy then far left one.

Of course it must be a mix in the force and most folks a perfectly fine, but I would expect the same situation in various types of army, private security etc.

> "...local law enforcement departments has been ideologically compromised by Right Extremism ..."

The part of the political spectrum that's associated with the "defund the police" movement is unpopular with law enforcement officers? How surprising.

(For the record, I am a liberal.)

Unclear to me why this type response is repeated twice here, I think the point was more the DOJ and FBI have been sitting on their hands while things escalate to this recent level

> opening the barriers for them

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/capitol-police-opened-gate...

https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/07/ask-politifac...

A while ago I got into watching first amendment auditors on YouTube, and getting riled up about police lack of regard for individual rights.

Then the feed gave me a video from DonutOperator, a former police officer who breaks down police shooting videos to explain why they do what they do by training (and when they break their own rules).

Now I kind of see both sides, still some bad cops, but also a lot of negative police interactions driven by massive levels of criminalizing consensual activities requiring beat cops to serve as a morality police.

In the end, if you spend your day ordering people to stop “bad” activities, and occasionally the worst of them physically force a violent confrontation, you start to view anyone similar to them as negative stereotypes and you begin to desire even more law and order from your leaders.

Stop spreading misinformation. You are being part of the problem.

Is it? There are videos of this happening. If you have evidence to the contrary please add that to your comment.

The videos don't show what you think they do. Capital Police leadership planned poorly and their leadership is at fault. They had to fall back to more secure chokepoints because they were outnumbered and overwhelmed. The cops didn't let anyone in. They killed someone and one of them was killed in the fighting. Please don't stir up trouble with fake conjecture over a 30 second clip that doesn't show what really happened. It is what caused a lot of these problems. You are making it worse.

It's true the clip is a force multiplier, but that they were this level of unprepared when Trump had just won the most votes for a losing candidate in election history, when these elements had already demonstrated a willingness to bear arms in the lockdown protests earlier in the year, and that there'd been a conspiracy to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, all contributes to the suspicion that collusion was a possibility, on top of their rejecting offers for help from the National Guard.

But the BLM protests they were fully staffed, armed, and equipped? There's just no innocent reading of this situation at the least.

It is accurate to say they didn't plan and they should have and it is likely that race and political leanings played into that poor planning. It isn't accurate to say the police on the ground abetted the the rioters. They clearly did not and it riles people up and erodes the faith in our public servants.

They didn't just "not plan" ... listen to the NYT Daily podcast from this morning. There was an insane amount of discussion online about planning for this attack on the capital. Out in the open. I agree with the reporter, if they could easily find it, then LEOs could find it.

Let's assume they knew about all this chatter. That leaves a single possibility: the leadership was sympathetic to what they knew would happen.

It is very clear, when it comes to liberals and BLM protesters, then they severely give a fuck.

The video of Senator-elect Warnock getting arrested for praying in the rotunda... the comparison of the two different groups is just stunning.

The US has a very difficult to problem to solve within the ranks of its police. They've become militarized to an extreme degree, which is in turn either moving their rank-and-file more to the right, or attracting those who are already there, or both. The NYPD, as an example, have had multiple instances of openly supporting Trump while on duty [0] and just yesterday, I think it was the head of Chicago police union severely downplayed the Capitol riot and even openly sympathized with them in the media [1]. Add on top of that the images of the Capitol police either taking selfies with the rioters or moving the gates out of the way to let them in, and yeah, you've got a problem.

I hopefully don't need to further elucidate why that polarization is a very bad thing. It amazes me that so many of my friends -- I'm white, middle-class, from the Midwest -- do not understand why so many fellow citizens are afraid of the cops and feel like there are two systems in place.

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/nypd-officer-trump-2020-suspended-j...

[1] https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/chicago-police-union-bos...

> I hopefully don't need to further elucidate why that polarization is a very bad thing

This isn't polarization, it's radicalization.

His interview was apparently before the DC officer succumbed to his injuries, otherwise he would have used a different word dance to try to explain why this was different than anarchists rioting at BLM protests.

> They've become militarized to an extreme degree, which is in turn either moving their rank-and-file more to the right

I'm not sure if I buy that this moves them to the right. It might make them more authoritarian, but that's separate from left/right politics.

I would posit that authoritarian tendencies and mindsets are very tightly correlated with the right in the US.

In some ways, but not in others. For instance, many people on the left consider mandatory vaccination something they strongly support. Sure, the science supports the benefits to society, and most people opposed are misinformed or crazy, but it's still advocating for the government to mandate your body be injected with a synthetic substance against your will.

The left is more than happy to mandate everyone participate in social programs to help disadvantaged members of society, the individual mandate of ObamaCare is authoritarian: It requires people who are unlikely to benefit to pay in to cover those who are unprofitable to provide health coverage to. I am definitely in support of universal healthcare, but it's also arguably an authoritarian choice to implement it.

Democrats absolutely will be authoritarian when it believes removing individual freedoms will benefit society as a whole, placing overall wellness and equality as priorities.

On the right, authoritarianism heavily shows with enforcing moral values. It isn't enough for someone on the right to oppose abortion, it needs to be taken away from everyone. (If you consider abortion to be murder, by the way, this position makes logical sense. You wouldn't say "I don't believe in killing people, but I won't take away your right to do it" because that's silly.) Bans on gay marriage or drug use have less to do with societal well-being and more with the religiously-set values of what is "right" and "good".

To be fair, the left didn't want Obamacare, the left wanted European-style nationalized healthcare. Obamacare was more the result of sabotage by the Republicans and desperate compromises made by Obama for the sake of his legacy than actual leftist policy.

True, but I don't think that invalidates my point: The left would've technically chosen a more authoritarian policy, where they charge everyone for healthcare (via taxes) non-optionally and with no provider choice.

It's also likely true the outcome would've been a better system too.

Fair points. Thanks for the well-reasoned reply.

I have no idea why this is being downvoted, other than potentially because people don't want to hear it, admit it, or listen to minorities who have talked it ad infinitum.

This is a great read on subject [0].

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

Reminds me of the reluctance in 2008 of the healthier banks to accept capital injections they didn't need to serve as cover for the banks that did, sort of. On top of concern for appearances of not needing it, one reason that may have been argued was that they would presumably be pressured by the feds along populist lines, like bonuses. Not the best comparison.

America is all clowns now.

The Capitol Police report to Nancy Pelosi, I wonder if she was told about the federal intel that rioters were planning to "storm" the Capitol (in reality they more just waltzed in).

Same people here complaining why federal help was rejected would be complaining why federal help was sent if it was a BLM riot.

Very poor read on the room from where I'm standing, people are complaining precisely that the responses weren't symmetrical, which would be the definition of white privledge in this country.

When homeland security was sent to Portland, people were upset. Police agencies were forced to make policy changes and the arrival of the fed was sensationalized negatively in news media.

This time around, now people are outraged that the fed wasn't sent. My point is it's a damned if you, damned if you don't situation.

BLM Riots against murdering black people != those in power refusing to accept elections.

This whataboutism meme needs to stop.

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