In the aftermath of the Jan 6 Trumpist putsch at the Capitol, the world reeled - not just at the spectacle of the Capitol building overrun by deranged armed insurrectionists, but also at the manifest incompetence of the Capitol Police.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/07/revolutionary-colossus/#selective-incompetence
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The Capitol Police command $460m/year, 10% of Congress's total budget. They had ample warning that murderous, anti-democratic revolutionaries were converging on the Capitol. They had a long track-record of over-responding to protests with overwhelming shows of force.
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Given the track-record, the budget and the warnings, could we truly attribute the failure to contain the insurrectionists to incompetence? Did the shots of police officers taking selfies with members of a lynch mob mean that the force was complicit with the traitors?
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Now, six officers have been suspended and 29 more are under investigation for collaborating with the rioters. They join the nationwide active-duty military and police officers who have faced consequences for their role in the mob violence.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/18/politics/capitol-police-officers-suspended/
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Last week, Propublica published a chilling, brilliant investigation by Joaquin Sapien and Joshua Kaplan sourced from 19 current and former Capitol Police officers who are furious and bewildered at the failure of their command.
They describe scenes of absolute carnage and chaos, of rioters who were so aggressive and violent that officers suspected that they were high on meth, of protesters fumbling their own firearms and trying to grab pistols off officers' hips.
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@pluralistic Some of them might have been on drugs, but I doubt it was very many. I think it was more likely the righteous certainty of belonging to a cult-like group. Cults can affect behavior in a similar way to certain drugs.
