“Capitol Police did have a plan, but apparently they assumed business as usual,” an unnamed law enforcement official told the Post. “They didn’t expect Trump to incite them and that they would forcefully push their way in. Bottom line, there just wasn’t enough personnel to prevent a mob from pushing in.”
But here’s the thing: Saying “we didn’t know they would seriously invade the Capitol” is no excuse. It’s simply a statement that the Capitol Police gave this group special treatment ahead of time—when leaders didn’t plan to stop them from storming the Capitol—and regretted it afterward.
These domestic terrorists were public about their plans, and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser started warning the city’s residents about the potential for violence days ahead of time. A District official described the realization that “this could be a stadium-sized crowd—a full-fledged Trump rally, and much bigger than anything we had seen previously.”
But “even as people poured into downtown Washington midmorning Wednesday, Capitol Police officials assured D.C. police leaders that they felt comfortable with their security setup, according to a senior District law enforcement official,” the Post reports. Once again, the failure to defend the Capitol building and the members of Congress and staff and other workers within it was a decision made at the top of the department. The individual police officers who took selfies with domestic terrorists or opened gates to allow them inside are a problem, but they are not the source of the problem.
Congress is taking notice. “There was not supposed to be anyone near the Capitol. You would be reasonably close, to be able to protest and express your view, but nobody belongs on the Capitol plaza, nobody ever goes on the Capitol steps, that is an illegal act. ... Those were illegal acts, and those people should have been immediately arrested,” Rep. Tim Ryan told reporters. He made the likely outcome explicit, saying “I think it’s pretty clear that there are going to be a number of people who are going to be without employment very, very soon.”
Those people who are without employment should include people at the decision-making level, the people who treated this known, explicit threat so much more casually than Black Lives Matter protesters have been treated in cities across the country over recent years, and at the Capitol itself.
“If Black people had done what these White domestic terrorists did today, can you imagine the reaction? They would have been tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and charged with felonies—or treason,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement. “Another tragic display of our two systems of justice.”
Once the Capitol Police had made the disastrous mistake of failing to prepare for what was coming, they and other law enforcement agencies spent the ensuing hours playing catch up. We’re told that there weren’t more arrests because “There just weren’t enough personnel to do everything.” But again, the insufficient personnel was a decision someone made.
The National Guard was eventually called in, a last resort after Bowser had tried to prevent a repeat of last summer’s armed federal occupation of the District. Again, though, you have to wonder if officials at every level would have worked so hard to avoid the images of armed troops in the Capitol if they’d been dealing with a racial justice protest. And when the Capitol Police did request backup, the Pentagon took its time with that request.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but the people looking into it—including members of Congress who were themselves under direct threat during the invasion of the Capitol—need to consider the lack of preparation not as an “oops” but as a decision, an assessment that Trump’s supporters would not pose the threat that they had for weeks been telling everyone they would absolutely pose, given the chance.
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