Over the past year (and longer), we’ve seen police across the country attack — and use brutal, unnecessary force against — Black Lives Matter activists.
At Lafayette Park near the White House, militarized law enforcement viciously tear-gassed and cleared a peaceful crowd last summer just so Donald Trump could stage a photo-op in front of a church (a stunt the church’s rector and bishop subsequently denounced).
Contrast that with what we saw Wednesday, when a MAGA horde numbering in the thousands — incited by Donald Trump himself — invaded and temporarily seized control of the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
Many of them armed, they smashed windows and doors, forced their way into congressional leadership offices, vandalized the building, entered the House chamber, fought hand-to-hand with Capitol police, deployed chemical irritants against police, and left an unexploded IED (improvised explosive device) on the Capitol grounds.
It was a certainty — known weeks in advance — that these potential seditionists would descend on D.C. on the day Congress was set to certify the Electoral College results making Joe Biden the next president.
And it was a certainty that Donald Trump would incite them to aggressive and likely violent action.
- Yet somehow, neither the Capitol grounds nor the interior of the building were teeming with law enforcement.
- Somehow, the relatively few law enforcement personnel who were present seemed — at least in some instances caught on video — reluctant to defend the Capitol from the mob.
- Somehow — perhaps most startlingly — almost no arrests were made.
- Even though the non-patriots who raided the Capitol were, without question, violating numerous laws and threatening the safety of our elected representatives in Congress, the Capitol police permitted hundreds to waltz out of the building without so much as asking their names.
The best-case explanation for what happened Wednesday is that law enforcement was incomprehensibly and inexcusably unprepared.
But even if that’s “all” it was, it would be unimaginable — as Joe Biden noted yesterday — to see that kind of police response to a peaceful protest led by people of color.
As a nation, we have to come to grips with that.
We also need a probing investigation into how, exactly, the police breakdown at the Capitol occurred.
Join Public Citizen in demanding answers:
Why was law enforcement so apparently unprepared and under-deployed for Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol?
How could such a catastrophic “intelligence failure” happen when the insurrectionists advertised their plans on the internet for weeks?
Why was it so easy for the MAGA militia to overrun the very halls of Congress?
Why were violent insurrectionists afforded such a hands-off approach by law enforcement?
Are there any connections between law enforcement and the insurrectionists?
Why were so few arrests made despite countless obvious and serious crimes being committed in plain daylight and in full view of law enforcement?
Add your name.
Thank you for taking action.
For peace and sanity,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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