Why was there such a safety failure at the Capital? What happened?

Rogue Capitol police officers working in sync with protestors. The proof is in their Parler accounts.

I think the huge number of people played a part.

I think cops are more hesitant than ever to shoot unarmed civilians. Can you imagine if they just unloaded on the first 25-30 people before they got in the building? It would have deterred the rest of the mob but would have been called a bloody massacre of unarmed people.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Rainy Day wrote:

I think the huge number of people played a part.

I think cops are more hesitant than ever to shoot unarmed civilians. Can you imagine if they just unloaded on the first 25-30 people before they got in the building? It would have deterred the rest of the mob but would have been called a bloody massacre of unarmed people.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Why didn't they lock the doors?

The capital police are very well funded and armed, they knew dangerous people were coming, why didn't they have more police, better armed waiting to protect the capital.

Never mind guns. Literally they just walked in. Nothing was patrolled. After 911 I would think our homeland security could drum up a little more security. The president knew and orchestrated this no doubt. Plus the willingness of a few bad cops.

I thought Blue Lives mattered? wrote:

Our intelligence and police agencies knew through social media that dangerous people coming to the capital coming to attack the capital. There were very well armed with guns, metal pipes, tasers and gas.

Why weren't the doors locked to slow entry?

Rogue Capitol police officers working in sync with protestors. The proof is in their Parler accounts.[/quote]

I believe this might be true for those in charge and for some on the front lines. Other poor policemen had to pay the price for this.

Lock the doors, then the Nat Guard In gas masks sweeps from the outside with tear gas and batons.

Pretty simple really. Law and order

abce1 wrote:

Never mind guns. Literally they just walked in. Nothing was patrolled. After 911 I would think our homeland security could drum up a little more security. The president knew and orchestrated this no doubt. Plus the willingness of a few bad cops.

I think the concept of 'a few' is going to come under very direct scrutiny in the coming weeks. The Dems should make it a sticking point - US law enforcement is full of white supremacists.

Cap police have 2300 officers to guard 16 acres worth of buildings - this is twice as many officers as the city of Minneapolis which has a half million residents.

They were willing participants.

They only had a certain amount of capitol police there when it all started, and there were too many people for them to stop. I imagine arresting someone is at best a 1-1 ratio, so to stop 5 individuals from doing something they're not supposed to you would need 5 capitol police. To stop 200 people, well you get the idea. And it's not like the people were storming the capitol building with guns and shooting down everyone they saw like the Mumbai terrorist attack from 2008. It was a bunch of people just forcing themselves past the police without any weapons from what I've seen. I'm pretty sure the one lady shot was shot by the police. Would the democrats rather have had the capitol police mowing down everyone even though they didn't have weapons?

Now the comparison of 'we don't want you to shoot them like you shoot us (BLM), we want you to not shoot us like you don't shoot them'... Well how many times have people been shot by police during BLM protests? I'm pretty sure more police have died during BLM protests than the other way around. Most of the deaths that BLM protesters are protesting about happened in one-off incidents, not during big mass riots. During the BLM riots this year there wasn't a single situation where police shot down dozens of protestors. And back to the original reason of why they got in, there was a lack of police there when it first started, because no one was expecting that to actually happen with so many people.

Don't get me wrong, everyone protesting is a complete idiot. But the reasons above are why it was able to happen and why the police didn't just start shooting them down.

hani saleem wrote:

abce1 wrote:

Never mind guns. Literally they just walked in. Nothing was patrolled. After 911 I would think our homeland security could drum up a little more security. The president knew and orchestrated this no doubt. Plus the willingness of a few bad cops.

I think the concept of 'a few' is going to come under very direct scrutiny in the coming weeks. The Dems should make it a sticking point - US law enforcement is full of white supremacists.

Cap police have 2300 officers to guard 16 acres worth of buildings - this is twice as many officers as the city of Minneapolis which has a half million residents.

They were willing participants.

At minimum a strong protrump bias affected their judgement on this. "They are protesting against fraud and for Trump so they must be good people"

At maximum people in control wanted the electoral college vote messed with.

Trump did prevent the National Guard from stopping them until his hand was forced.

I read that while all leave had been cancelled for the 2,200 officers in the Capitol police, only 500 were actually on duty at the time, and they were not issued any riot gear beforehand. Also, the police had apparently declined an offer made three days earlier to have National Guard troops deployed in advance. This meant that when things got out of control, national guard troops weren't given permission to deploy until about an hour after the Capitol had been breached due to the necessary approvals up the chain of command. Additionally, Capitol police apparently turned down offers for assistance from the FBI shortly after things went violent.

I saw that the Chief of Capitol Police and the House Sergeant at Arms have both resigned. Seems appropriate.

If 39% of the Country supports Trump it follows that 39% of the police are Trump supporters. Of course that doesn't explain the inadequate number of police. That comes from the top. Did the top cop intentionally pull back security? Scary thought. Throw the book at the worst offenders. Make an example of them. A minimum of ten years in Federal prison.

This is why wrote:

Don't get me wrong, everyone protesting is a complete idiot. But the reasons above are why it was able to happen and why the police didn't just start shooting them down.

I mostly agree with your analysis, that is, there simply wasn't sufficient police presence for what ensued, which is not the fault of the officers on the scene.

It is important to distinguish between peaceful demonstration, which is a constitutional right, and violent protest and destruction of property which should not be tolerated.

The most generous explanation of the lack of police presence at this event is that the command chain badly misjudged the nature of the protestors for this event.

Monkeys typing wrote:

This is why wrote:

Don't get me wrong, everyone protesting is a complete idiot. But the reasons above are why it was able to happen and why the police didn't just start shooting them down.

I mostly agree with your analysis, that is, there simply wasn't sufficient police presence for what ensued, which is not the fault of the officers on the scene.

It is important to distinguish between peaceful demonstration, which is a constitutional right, and violent protest and destruction of property which should not be tolerated.

The most generous explanation of the lack of police presence at this event is that the command chain badly misjudged the nature of the protestors for this event.

They had to know based on the numerous social media posts about what people were bringing to this march. The danger was apparent to many including Pelosi and the mayor who asked for more support the day before.

That was a post I made on the thread about the woman who was killed. This is not a Liberal/Conservative thing even though that's what people are making it. This is the Capitol, the home of the 535 members of our legislature. Regardless of what their politics are, they need to be 100% protected. Speaker Pelosi deserves as much protection as Sen. McConnell. I personally think Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is a wackjob but as a member of Congress she deserves to be protected at all costs, up to and including the use of deadly force if necessary. Protests should not have ANYTHING to do with how much security the building has. It should be 100% protected 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 99.9% is not good enough. There should never be an entrance that is not protected by an armed guard. I can assure you that NONE of those officers were complicit in letting people in. The police on site were simply overwhelmed by the numbers despite their best efforts. I saw one video where one guard was trying to hold off a large group with just his baton. He retreated to the landing of the stairwell to take the high ground to give himself better odds but there was no possible way he could have held them off by himself. Where was his backup? If you look at the Capitol layout, which is available online for all of our enemies to view, it is not very far from the front doors to the House and Senate chambers. People need to be stopped at the door. If we can put unbreachable doors on airplane cockpits in response to 9/11, we can put unbreachable doors in the Capitol. Every first floor window needs to be replaced with bullet proof glass that cannot be easily broken, even by a large mob. We were fortunate that this was not a dangerous group that intended to cause terror. Despite some of them carrying guns, nobody was shot except for the woman (justifiably) shot by the officer. Had this been a terrorist group, they would have shown the same mercy on the people in the building (congressmen, security personnel, tourists, staff, janitors, everyone) as they showed us on 9/11. The four Puerto Ricans who attacked the Capitol in the 1950s caused a lot more terror and shot five members of the House. A lone gunman killed two officers inside the Capitol about 20 years ago. If this group wanted to get violent, they had enough people and guns to massacre hundreds. The National Guard Armory in DC is less than two miles due East of the Capitol. They should have been called in immediately. Why did they not have a quick reaction force ready to go at a moment's notice? They could have been on the scene in less than 10 minutes.

Rainy Day wrote:

I think the huge number of people played a part.

I think cops are more hesitant than ever to shoot unarmed civilians. Can you imagine if they just unloaded on the first 25-30 people before they got in the building? It would have deterred the rest of the mob but would have been called a bloody massacre of unarmed people.

I think this had a lot to do with their response. The lone officer on the steps could have held off the crowd if he had pulled his sidearm but only used his baton. A fairly large crowd in a fatal funnel like a staircase can usually be controlled pretty well with a gun because even though he can't shoot everyone, some will be shot and nobody wants to be one of them.

I hate these coulda, shoulda, woulda posts. Like, how did 911 happen? Well, sometimes you can't anticipate everything.

stan the corgi wrote:

I hate these coulda, shoulda, woulda posts. Like, how did 911 happen? Well, sometimes you can't anticipate everything.

Uhh, we DID anticipate 9/11 and the those at the top failed to respond. There is a drumbeat of security professionals at home and from around the world saying there is NO WAY that this security failure happened on accident. There was complicity and deliberate sabotage at high levels.

I know a lot of cops. They are all Trump supporters. But their take on this has been that it was just bad management from the chief of the Capitol Police. The one thing about cops that you can count on is that they will never place themselves in harms way unnecessarily. So while there were obviously sympathizers amongst the Capitol Police. I think they ultimately were sent in to protect the capitol completely unprepared due to their chief's incompetence and not a premeditated plan to blow off security to let the protestors in.

But stepping back from the question of the Trump protest, it was shocking to see that the way capitol police and the sergeant at arms protected the actual floor of the House and Senate was to move furniture in front of the door.

Members of congress were attacked in the House in the 1950s when Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire during a terrorist attack on Congress. And then you have more recently the mass shooting at the Republican softball practice. There have been terrorist attacks on the seat of government in other countries. The 2001 attack on the Indian parliament killed dozens. You would think that with all the massive spending on homeland security since 911 that someone would have installed heavy duty bullet proof doors that could be locked quickly to the floor of the Senate and House by now. Basically, the Trumpers have shown that a small group of heavily armed terrorists could easily breach the capitol and make their way to the floor of the Senate and House and the only defense would be to scramble everyone out of the building.

According to the media (NBC News, NY Times, and others) and all the usual race-baiters (e.g., most of the liberals on this website, LeBron James), the amount of destruction and ease of entrance was due to the fact that Capitol police are racists. Here's the weird kicker on that: the racist beliefs of the Capitol police didn't cause them to just oppress black criminals and rioters,as they would usually do. Rather the inverse - the racist Capitol police were actually lenient to white criminals, and acted to facilitate their rioting and crimes.

This is a new twist in the Woke arguments on race. It's kind of a bananas argument here, given that the white criminals were trying to vandalize what is considered the center of white Supremacy - the US capitol - so, according to the argument, the racist Capitol police were conspiring and helping to trash their own racist shrine. But being bananas never stopped liberal acceptance of any Woke stories so far, and we can expect this to be the primary media focus of any investigation into yesterday's events.

Because Trump was in charge.