Why didn't the Feds arrest the 1/6 rioters on the spot?
Much easier, effective and cheaper than trying to grab them after the fact.
All the footage replays over the last couple of days reminded me that the few hundred Capitol and DC police were left on their own to battle thousands by those with the power to arrest their attackers.
If the attackers were BLM protesters, they’d have been arrested on the spot, if not shot dead. Like Liz Cheney said, Trump is a guilty of “supreme dereliction of duty.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
Remember when Trump needed to look tough in June 2020?
Park police used tear gas, billy clubs, stun grenades and whatever they wanted to clear the protesters from Lafayette Square PDQ. And the protesters were peaceful.
How could those few cops actually take them into custody - cuff them, put them into vehicles and take them away? Considering how violent many of them were it would have required at least two or three officers to arrest and remove each perp. Obviously there weren’t enough officers to arrest people if there weren’t enough to keep them out of the building.
My point is they weren’t applied in a way to result in mass arrests.
With all the forewarning, the Capitol was STILL inadequately defended on the day Congress was certifying Biden’s election.
My OP should have made it plain that if the Feds had applied adequate and available manpower, as they had in summer 2000, those participating in the insurrection would not have escaped arrest.
That's #1.
Secondly they wanted to get the insurrectionists OUT of the Capitol so that Congress could finish its business that day.
Thirdly I don't know that the National Guard has authority to arrest and jail people. (?) The Guard were called in to keep the peace and to protect the Senators and Congressmen, and they did that. The only problem was that they were called too late and a lot of injuries and damage happened quickly, as we all saw.
50 YEARS AGO, D.C. SAW THE LARGEST MASS ARREST IN U.S. HISTORY, AND ACLU RESPONDED
By Arthur B. Spitzer, Senior Counsel
American Civil Liberties Union, MAY 3, 2021
On May 3, 4, and 5, 1971, more than 13,000 people were arrested in Washington, D.C.—the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.
Many of them had come to Washington to demonstrate against the War in Vietnam. Some planned to block streets and bridges. The Nixon administration decided to be proactive, and arrest anyone who looked like they might try to do such a thing. (Most arrests were made by D.C. police, but the decisions were made right in the White House.) As a result, 7,000 people were arrested on May 3—including a few people who were blocking streets and bridges, and thousands of people who were demonstrating legally, or walking to school or work, or watching from the sidelines. Basically, if you were in downtown D.C., you were liable to be arrested—including undercover police officers who were arrested because other officers didn’t know the code word signifying “I’m a cop.”
More than 2,000 were arrested on May 4 while demonstrating on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Justice Department, and on May 5 more than 1,200 were arrested on the Capitol steps, where they had been invited by Reps. Ron Dellums and Bella Abzug, who watched their audience arrested out from under them as they were addressing the crowd.
Normal arrest and booking procedures went out the window. The police kept hardly any records that would enable them to show the legal basis of an arrest—and for most people there was no legal basis. Thousands of arrestees were detained in outdoor fenced areas, and in the old D.C. Coliseum, where they slept on the floor. The court system was also thrown into chaos.
The D.C. Public Defender Service and the ACLU rushed to court to secure the immediate release of the detainees. Many were released fairly quickly, but those who refused to give their names or fingerprints were held, in some cases, for several days.
Continues…
https://www.acludc.org/en/news/50-years-ago-dc-saw-largest-mass-arrest-us-history-and-aclu-responded
And here’s an example of when the Feds arrested 13,000 protesters one fine weekend in 1971:
50 YEARS AGO, D.C. SAW THE LARGEST MASS ARREST IN U.S. HISTORY, AND ACLU RESPONDED
By Arthur B. Spitzer, Senior Counsel
American Civil Liberties Union, MAY 3, 2021
On May 3, 4, and 5, 1971, more than 13,000 people were arrested in Washington, D.C.—the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.
Many of them had come to Washington to demonstrate against the War in Vietnam. Some planned to block streets and bridges. The Nixon administration decided to be proactive, and arrest anyone who looked like they might try to do such a thing. (Most arrests were made by D.C. police, but the decisions were made right in the White House.) As a result, 7,000 people were arrested on May 3—including a few people who were blocking streets and bridges, and thousands of people who were demonstrating legally, or walking to school or work, or watching from the sidelines. Basically, if you were in downtown D.C., you were liable to be arrested—including undercover police officers who were arrested because other officers didn’t know the code word signifying “I’m a cop.”
More than 2,000 were arrested on May 4 while demonstrating on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Justice Department, and on May 5 more than 1,200 were arrested on the Capitol steps, where they had been invited by Reps. Ron Dellums and Bella Abzug, who watched their audience arrested out from under them as they were addressing the crowd.
Normal arrest and booking procedures went out the window. The police kept hardly any records that would enable them to show the legal basis of an arrest—and for most people there was no legal basis. Thousands of arrestees were detained in outdoor fenced areas, and in the old D.C. Coliseum, where they slept on the floor. The court system was also thrown into chaos.
The D.C. Public Defender Service and the ACLU rushed to court to secure the immediate release of the detainees. Many were released fairly quickly, but those who refused to give their names or fingerprints were held, in some cases, for several days.
Continues…
https://www.acludc.org/en/news/50-years-ago-dc-saw-largest-mass-arrest-us-history-and-aclu-responded
You’re welcome.
Perhaps, if the cops shot the first ones through the breaches, the ones behind might have gone ballistic and there would have been the carnage Dimdonnie Drumpf wanted and needed to declare martial law.
Capitol attackers ran past reinforced windows to vulnerable ones. How did they know where to go?
Laura Clawson
Daily Kos, October 04, 2021
This sounds like something the investigations of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol should be taking a very close look at: Most of the ground-floor windows and doors in the Capitol had been reinforced just a couple years ago. But the insurrectionists were in several cases able to zero in on the dozen or so ground-floor windows and doors that hadn’t been reinforced, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Most of the building’s ground floor had been strengthened in a 2017-2019 renovation, with the view that the biggest threat the Capitol was likely to face came from a bomb outside of the building, and a large risk to human life would come from flying glass. A few windows weren’t reinforced either because they were seen as unlikely to pose an implosion risk or because the heavier frames of bomb-proof glass couldn’t be supported by specific parts of the old building. They were left reinforced only by thin Kevlar film added after 9/11.
The reasons for the choices about reinforcing or not reinforcing any given window are worth revisiting, and maybe the security improvements made to the Capitol in the wake of Jan. 6 will bring shifts. But here’s the most interesting part: How did the insurrectionists find the windows and doors they could batter their way through?
“Video shows some of the first rioters to break through the police line running past 15 reinforced windows, making a beeline for a recessed area on the Senate side of the building, where two unreinforced windows and two doors with unreinforced glass were all that stood between them and hallways leading to lawmakers inside who had not begun to evacuate,” the L.A. Times reports.
That took effort: “The four unreinforced windows and doors that were the first points of entry on Jan. 6 are all in a recessed alcove, shielded by exterior walls on three sides. They were not the first windows, nor the easiest to reach for rioters storming up the Capitol steps. Attackers ran more than 100 feet across a courtyard to reach the covered outdoor entryway, where two unreinforced windows and one of the doors are.”
It sounds like at least some people in that mob knew where they were going and what they were doing in targeting those specific entries. So … if that’s the case, how did they know? This is something to investigate.
Continues…
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/4/2056034/-Capitol-s-defenses-were-designed-with-bombs-not-a-mob-in-mind-Still-how-did-it-get-in-so-easily
There’s so much to learn. And so little time.
But as you know, there was only 80,000 people at the Jan. 6 rally/riot, compared with 800,000 at the Million Man March 
In 2017, Rev. Warnock knelt in prayer at Capitol and was arrested and handcuffed.
...Warnock, the Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor, was arrested on the spot when he led a prayer in the Capitol Rotunda that year. He and other religious leaders were protesting healthcare cuts in President Donald Trump's proposed budget....
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/raphael-warnock-2017-us-capitol-arrest-reexamined/85-9e6aa191-54b5-4fcd-9088-3e3e6147b5ef
even being picked up.
Each vote counts 1. It helps elect and defeat whether we choose to add it to one candidate or refuse to substract it from another. In 2016, 100 million people chose to leave it alone and let it surprise them with what they'd done.
