"It Could Have Been MUCH Worse"
- 'It Could Have Been MUCH Worse,' Daily Kos, Jan. 10, 2021.
as you can read in this powerful and troubling Washington Post story.
Consider: The McConnell adviser, who described his role on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns after the attack, reached out to former top officials at the Justice Department. Speaking in a whisper, he told one the situation was dire: If backup did not arrive soon, people could die. And consider this, from the narrative of the day: A seeming fortress from a distance, the Capitol contains more than 400 separate doors, entryways and ground-level windows. And police lines on all sides of the building were collapsing.
Where there could have been help, but it had not been requested: In fact, a small quick-reaction force at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland had been assembled by the Defense Department to assist if needed — but it did not immediately respond because of a lack of a prior planning with Capitol police over how it might be deployed, Pentagon officials said.
Please keep reading. The article is long, and I am going to push fair use in what I offer.
Read this: Outside on the west side of the building, a handful of Capitol police officers had been backed into a corner, under the scaffolding holding up the inaugural stage. One was pulled down a set of stairs and then beaten and kicked while he tried to cover his head, according to footage of the incident. Atop the stairs, another had his helmet ripped off as he tried to hold up the last remaining metal barrier before the crowd could flood into the building. A person in the mob sprayed something at an officer. Another lifted a hammer above his head as if preparing to throw it, and then instead began striking at the barrier, where officers were holding it with their hands. I have seen pictures of the officer referred to in the first of the preceding paragraphs, on the ground surrounded by violent insurrectionists.
And this, very important — read it all: At that moment, one floor below, rioters had crashed through windows and climbed into the Capitol and clashed with police, including a lone Black Capitol police officer who tried to prevent them from ascending toward the Senate chamber. A video captured by Igor Bobic, a congressional reporter for HuffPost on the scene, shows the officer trying to hold back a few dozen rioters who push him back and up the steps leading almost directly to the chamber. For almost a minute, the officer held them back — at the exact moment that, inside the Senate, police were frantically racing around the chamber trying to lock down more than a dozen doors leading to the chamber floor and the galleries above.
“Second floor!” the officer yelled into his radio, alerting other officers and command that the mob had reached the precipice of the Senate..
Similarly, the three officers who stood in front of the door to the Speaker’s Lobby were able to delay it being broken into long enough until additional officers with semi-automatic or automatic long guns arrived. Yes, one person was shot and killed trying to crawl through a broken window, but a mass rush in - where there anough officers to stop them? We know that had that entrance been breached the Congressmen who were still within the chamber would have been trapped...
More, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/1/10/2007827/-It-could-have-been-MUCH-worse
