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Comment by californical | Hacker News Reader

I’m sorry but if you’re a couple of police officers in a room full of literal terrorists, of course you’re going to try to be as restrained and friendly as possible. You’re horribly outnumbered.

They would be murdered if they tried to take on the crowd. They needed to wait for reinforcements to arrive, and meanwhile do their best to keep the crowd from going fully insane.

They managed the situation with very few people getting hurt, and protected the politicians. Which is pretty good considering how few police there were.

The main issue is why were there so few police there to begin with, so this could’ve been prevented in the first place.

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They had no problem tear gassing protesters this summer even though they were outnumbered.

I agree, that was an insane thing to do for those protests. It still bothers me.

But I think we should all be in favor of the police response being more restrained and minimizing force, like we saw this week. We should be advocating for more of this in general.

I am in favor for the police having a more intelligent response and careful use of force. But I think it is significantly more important that they are consistent; playing favorites seriously undermines their credibility and by extension the safety of all of us.

I am also in favor of protecting our legislative process with absurd levels of security when there is a known risk and tensions are so high. The police really screwed this up royally. I would like to know why. And not conspiracy theories, but actual root cause.

A big source of confusion was authority.

While the Congressmen were hiding in the bunker for an hour, they sent out many phone calls pleading for help.

* Pentagon / DoD didn't want to get involved.

* Maryland's Governor didn't want to get involved without DoD approval.

* Eventually, they got to Mike Pence who authorized the DoD to help out. Once the DoD deployed the National Guard, Maryland / Virginia was willing to help out too.

* The Mayor didn't have power to deploy the Guard. Only the President had that power.

The uh, selfie thing though..

So pictures were taken in selfiedefence?

A "tactical retreat" has always been a thing, but 2021 brought us the new concept of a "tactical selfie".

God help us all.

If they are terrorists, would you support police opening live fire on them. Just curious. Seems like all the SJW are now advocating for a Tiananmen square massacre of unarmed protesters, just because the TV told them who to hate.

I don't recall the Tiananmen Square student protestors storming the National People's Congress.

Also, these insurrectionists were armed with bombs and had planned on taking hostages as pictures show.

Lol no of course not. They tried to use force to terrorize the US government, so they could get their way. But they should be stopped with the minimum necessary force to prevent harm to others.

So I think the individual police officers (mostly) acted appropriately for the situation. The police organization’s planning was beyond negligent though.

You make a good point about some people’s response — the insanity caused by polarization clearly goes both ways, if there’s people saying everyone should’ve been shot. I’m kind of surprised more people weren’t shot though tbh. I always thought there were snipers and armed guards ready 24/7 around that whole area

"if they are terrorists"

As soon as they crossed the outer barricades, I support the use of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, just like the police would use on leftist protesters. Inside the building, when they are about to breach the chambers of congress -and- there are legislators inside, I support the use of deadly force. When they attack democracy, they are attacking all of us. And I don't care what their ideology is.

If the building is empty, then I think deadly force is unwarranted.

Absolutely. Moreover, why are the Capitol Police Chiefs singled out? Could they have asked for, say, the National Guard? Were they supposed to go to the leaders of Congress the days before the certification to make it happen? I was always of the idea that federal authorities would be tasked with such planning, enrolling (among others) the Capitol Police.

> Could they have asked for, say, the National Guard?

They declined the help, and that of the FBI

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-police-reject-federal-hel...

With all the context the police got and repeatedly turning down help, at this point I think the extra support should be mandatory. He ordered guards for other protests but not this? We can’t let the system protecting our government rely on one person’s decision like that. It’s so abhorrent it makes me paranoid thinking he was a part of it

Oh, that's... puzzling, then. Thanks for the source.

Reportedly the Capitol Police turned down offers for help both before and during the event. Best source I could find: https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/capitol-police-nixed-fbi-natio...

EDIT: The other comment has a better source

Capitol Police got 2 200 officers.

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