The assault on the Capitol this Wednesday was a chronicle of an announced chaos: the response of the police forces to a mob that had warned, repeatedly and for months, of their intentions, has been branded as a "disastrous failure", according to specialists in security around the country the day after the invasion.
Being a
predictable aggression, it was therefore preventable.
Above all because it was not just any day, but the date of an important congregation in which all the congressmen from both legislative chambers and even the vice president were to be present in the same room.
Trump supporters had been organizing for weeks through online chats and public events on Facebook, where they
discussed in detail their plans to sneak guns to Washington, DC and made threats of violence
for their march to try to reverse the electoral vote. and the popular vote.
In fact, in the surroundings of the Capitol (at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees) at least
two explosive devices
were found
,
which were deactivated.
Not only did the
pro-Trump
hooligans stormed the building, they smashed windows, took podiums, took down American flags
and scaffolds up for Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20.
In addition, what happened in the federal Capitol had already been seen, to a lesser degree, in state congress venues.
The most infamous precedent was just a few months old, when a group of right-wing militiamen stormed the Michigan government offices and later came to light that they had conducted training and plans to try to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
[On video: The moment when Trump asked his followers to "march to the Capitol"]
“Given what we have seen in recent months this should not have surprised [the authorities].
If you believe that a considerable amount of people are going to arrive and probably become violent or damage buildings, you make sure you have more officers, ”Carmen Best, who led the Seattle police for years, told NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo. .
A Capitol cop in front of several supporters of Donald Trump, dressed in pro-president shirts and alluding to the unfounded conspiracy theory Q Anon, on January 6, 2021.
When Trump used his speech at the rally to reject the election result, dubbed
Save America
, to
incite those who came to “march” to the Capitol
, the authorities also had some time to mobilize more officials under the protection of Congress.
That did not happen.
Even if the aggressions of the pro-Trump mob would have really taken the authorities so by surprise, the Capitol remains one of the most important government buildings in the country, which should be heavily guarded.
Inside the Capitol are not only the meeting rooms of the Senate and the House of Representatives, but offices with
sensitive documents, computers with confidential data, statues, art and books with an invaluable historical value.
For this reason,
on
any given day the Congress is heavily guarded
, especially the entrances.
The building has its own 2,000-officer police department.
Security experts still don't understand
how they were so easily bypassed.
[The most disturbing images of the assault on the US Capitol by pro-Trump protesters]
“Every day we train and review budgets to make sure something like this never happens.
What happened… I don't understand how, ”Kim Dine, who led the capital's police between 2012 and 2016, told The Washington Post.
Powerless, in contrast to other protests
In other marches towards the Capitol and in the vicinities, the response of the police and security forces has been much more forceful and aggressive.
Last year, at protests in Washington DC after the death of George Floyd, the black man who died of suffocation when an officer put a knee to his neck, there were at least 10 members of the National Guard stationed on each step in front of important sites like the Lincoln Memorial.
On Wednesday the same was not seen.
Officers "were not prepared for the size of the protest" on January 6, a former FBI member, David Gomez, told The Wall Street Journal.
Elements of the National Guard in Washington DC on June 2, 2020, during protests against the death of George Floyd.Getty Images /
This week, after the National Guard was summoned, the response took several hours despite the fact that
there were already armed and violent people inside one of the federal government buildings.
At the June 2020 rally for racial justice, there were more National Guard officers and troops used to disperse people so that Trump could take a photo in front of a church that had already been deployed Wednesday morning.
Last year, “Black people and progressives who were peacefully protesting were tear gassed, arrested immediately,
shot from the start with rubber bullets,
” said Derrick Johnson of the National Association for the Advancement of People. of Color (NAACP).
This January, the police were in normal uniform,
without riot gear
like those seen in the summer.
Washington DC lives the "largest" peaceful protests in the city for the death of George Floyd
June 6, 202002: 23
"There is definitely a double standard," Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge told USA Today.
There were
more than 400 arrests over three days in last year's protests,
on charges such as damaging public property and participating in public disturbances.
None of those people broke into a government building.
In contrast, as
of Thursday morning only 69 people
linked to the assault on the Capitol
had been arrested
, and almost all of them on very minor charges such as not following the curfew.
A warning for the future
For the time being, the National Guard will remain stationed in Washington DC and
the curfew decreed by Mayor Muriel Bowser will continue until at least January 21.
Some specialists opined that the Capitol police probably never imagined that the situation would grow so much, noting that sometimes
officers cannot do as much when certain political leaders give legitimacy
to violent people like those who broke in on Wednesday.
Donald Ritchie, a former Senate historian, said that throughout American history there have been many protests in front of that government building without similar violence.
"What happened is completely unusual in how Americans demonstrate or congregate or show their political sentiment," Ritchie told The Wall Street Journal.
"It is surprising that it has grown, just as I think it surprised the police a lot," he added.
Violent Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol took down American flags and hung cloths alluding to the outgoing president.
The police tried to disperse them into the night with gas shots.Reuters /
[A parallel environment a few blocks from the Capitol, with other Trump supporters without violence (and without a mask)]
Some Trump supporters have falsely argued that there were alleged "infiltrators" of the Antifa movement who, allegedly and without any evidence, sought to make the supporters of the outgoing president look bad, but this has been widely denied, especially by the fact that Various people portrayed inside the Capitol have been seen at many pro-Trump conservative protests or rallies.
One of them has even been identified as one of the great promoters of the baseless conspiracy of Q Anon, whose members favor Trump.
Trump himself tweeted a video on Wednesday afternoon expressing his affection for the Capitol vandals, who said "they are special", that "we love them", in a very different tone from what Trump has always had of strong criticism and accusations towards people from Antifa (or who he thinks is from Antifa).
The break into the Capitol “is the closest thing to a September 11 attack
in the sense that no one had ever done anything like this before, "investigator Chuck Wexler told The New York Times.
Therefore, experts like Wexler pointed out that
Wednesday's attack should serve as a warning.
The problem and the fear from now on is: given the answer to what happened on Wednesday, how much more are militiamen or violent followers of a politician going to believe that they can get away with it?
"My prediction is that
this is going to get worse,"
an official told NBC News.
With information from The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and NBC News