They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.
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/13401857732205158...
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.
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.
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.
This picture?
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pence_posing_with_...
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.
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-i...
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.
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...
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.
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?
It's a matter of law that they answer to the legislature, this isn't an "assumption." Individually they have answered to a not very sharp police chief, and the Sergeants-At-Arms of the House and Senate, who are all in the process of resigning because of how badly they recently screwed up, if that's what you mean.
I could have expressed myself better there - I was distinguishing between them being answerable to the legislature (de jure) in the logical, org chat way, and them "answering" to a mercurial president they ideologically agree with (de facto), in the here and now.
* 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.
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.
There's multiple camera angles which captured the minutes leading up to her death, posted on major news sites like The Washington Post, so no assumption needed.
I still don't feel the shoot to kill was justified (especially as a shot in an area that would immobilize a person, like the chest or the gut, would've been safer of collateral damage vs a shot to the head, similar to the one taken, which unequivocally is a shot intended to kill), but trying to argue she was not completely and totally in the wrong is just absurd to me.
Someone knowledgeable of the subject, which you imply I am not, would know that shooting someone in the middle of their body is the standard operating procedure (and is potentially less fatal, but yes legally still intended to kill) rather than taking an (essentially) headshot as this officer did.
Also notice I did not say what the officer did was "against policy" or illegal, I simply said I didn't feel it was justified (especially with where the shot hit). It's for the department and the courts to decide if the officer violated his duty.
Shooting a center of mass is not at all about being "less fatal" it is about it being the biggest target with the biggest chance of stopping your adversary.
Did I say it was? I believe I used the word "potentially" in the reply you are commenting to. The officer was shooting from ~6ft away and had a firm grip and was well composed, if they can't hit the chest of a target that was mostly still at the moment of the shot then they need to be spending a lot more time in the gun range (at the absolute minimum).
Not at all unlikely.
She was part of an armed mob trying in the process of breaking into the speakers lobby that posed an imminent threat to members of Congress, whom members of the mob had moments before loudly expressed concern were trying to leave.
“Trespassing” wasn't at all the issue.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that they would have been overstaffed if the protestors had a 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.
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.
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-sic...
So you are saying that the Capitol police succeeded in creating a honeypot that was meant to embarrass Trump?