Last night, I was hoping when I got up at 3AM that I would be able to get back to sleep before my thoughts of the previous day started up. No luck. Soooooo I ultimately ended up composing a letter in my head to my two Senators and Representative and just put it in the mail. I thought that I would share the contents with the community. I don’t write diaries often so here goes:
===================================================
I am writing today because I am absolutely livid at the events of yesterday. After losing two hours of sleep last night, my only recourse is to reach out to you to share my observations.
Firstly, our current president is a known quantity and that he incited an insurrection should not have been a surprise to anyone with knowledge of current events or coordinating a police response. Hopefully, for the good and safety of the nation, by the time you receive this letter he has been removed via the 25th Amendment and deplatformed from all social media to no longer incite the mobs to which he has been addressing these past 6-8 years.
The focus of my letter is the complete inadequacy of the police protection yesterday and the failure to anticipate what many of us regard as the logical conclusion of over four years of his dog-whistles to white, domestic terrorists. The absolute contrast of yesterday’s police protection against last summer’s police response to the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder is the part that is infuriating.
Yesterday’s complete failure of policing led to a debasement of our nation’s capitol that summoned images of some unstable Eastern European or Latin American country that we read about: Images of people huddled behind chairs in the House of Representatives, of the disgraced Confederate battle flag paraded down the halls of the building, of ruffians on the dais of the House, ransacking the office of Nancy Pelosi, someone wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie in the hallways along with other Nazi images, etc. All of these images were shared around the world to debase our “soft power” as a lawful country and ability to resist the encroaching authoritarianism of China or the mob rule of Russia. For decades to come, yesterday’s images will be a source for “but what about….” when we seek to instill a lawful world order.
This failure is at the feet to yesterday’s police protection. It points to two problems that urgently need to be addressed over the coming years:
White Supremacists In Police Forces
Media reports state that some Capitol police opened the gates to the mob yesterday and there were instances where the police were taking selfie photos with these people. This “kid gloves” treatment of this mob stands in stark contrast to last summer’s police response to the peaceful protests for BLM. Underpinning both yesterday’s events and last summer’s events is the same message: we have a problem of white supremacists in not only the Capitol Police but also many police forces in the United States. This problem is behind not only the police sympathies of yesterday but also the deaths of many unarmed blacks throughout the country as well as behind the harshness of police response when BLM protests arose nationwide in response to highlight this ongoing problem.
This issue is not unique to the United States. Recent news reports state that Germany is also dealing with neo-nazi and far-right extremism in their police forces throughout their country.
On the micro level, those officers yesterday who aided the mob and/or took selfies with them need to be removed from the Capitol Police force immediately. There needs to be a database to prevent these people to then move to a different police force.
On a broader level, there needs to be broad police reform throughout this country with each municipality having a civilian complaint review board independent from the police force with real teeth to remove the “bad apples” bringing dishonor to the other police members of the same force. A database needs to be established to prevent rogue officers from employment at other police forces. Police unions need to be demoted in power so that they can no longer shield these bad apples from consequences of malpractice. Much like doctors – who similarly wield life or death powers – police officers should carry malpractice insurance so that when there are civil penalties for police abuse, these penalties are paid out of this insurance and police pension funds instead of municipal budgets. For too long, taxpayers of municipalities have shouldered the costs of rogue police forces. Well run police forces with competent, well trained officers will have very low actuarial costs for this insurance. European countries have far higher requirements for training to become a police officer. This country should both increase the training requirements for officers around de-escalation, civics, and law principles as well as increase the pay for police officers in order to show the higher esteem and standards of this important societal role.
Lastly, on a macro level, the United States should work with other countries such as Germany to share each other’s successes and failures in dealing with right-wing extremism that is polluting our police forces. There is much knowledge to be gained by collaborating on this shared problem.
Statehood for D.C.
Reading about yesterday’s events, it appears that the National Guard apportioned to D.C. was held captive by the Pentagon while our capitol building was being ransacked until finally the Vice President released them. Until then, Mayor Bowser was forced to request National Guard assistance from neighboring Virginia and Maryland with significant delay. As states, Virginia and Maryland have executive control over their National Guard. The problem yesterday was that the president’s vindictiveness, combined with his civilian appointments at the Pentagon of loyalist flunkies allowed D.C.’s National Guard to be held back at a critical moment.
On the other side of the coin, last summer’s BLM protests that were almost entirely peaceful, were met by a wartime deployment of forces that we all can remember from the news photos. Were even half of this force available yesterday, the situation would have been kept under control.
The issue is that, unlike a state, much of the policing for the city of D.C. is not under the control of the District of Columbia but instead of the executive branch of the Federal government. As such, the city can be used as a political football to manipulate the police optics of the many protest events that transpire in our nation’s capitol. The full spectrum of a police state’s absolute control to the chaos of a failed state was orchestrated purely by the White House in the past nine months in the two different political events.
For this reason, the District of Columbia needs statehood so that these 690,000 people can control their destiny in the same manner that the 571,000 people of Wyoming can now do so. They are currently taxed without a voice in our country. Likewise, the city cannot safely regulate its security needs around the many political events that take place in the capitol independent of political calculations not relevant to maintaining order.
In conclusion, I strongly feel that there should be severe consequences for this insurrection. These consequences are due not only the perpetrators themselves who ransacked the capitol, but also the instigators such as Trump, Hawley, Cruz, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Kennedy, Tuberville, and the 147 Representatives in the house who sided with sedition. Without consequences, the stage is set for future such events.
Added to this list is the need for reform of the Capitol Police, other police forces throughout the country, and statehood for the District of Columbia.
Thank you for your consideration.
==========================================
Hopefully, my two hours of tossing and turning was well spent. Thoughts?
