
(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)
The Capitol Hill Riot did not just happen. The Capitol Police did not just make a mistake yesterday, January 6, 2021.
Law enforcement showed a very different face yesterday from Black Lives Matter protests and since June, when border guards and prison guards and the D.C. National Guard all showed up equipped for riots, although there were no riots.
I am not sure about the involvement of the Capitol Police or for that matter the involvement of the Metropolitan Police Department (D.C. Police) on those earlier occasions. I do not know if they were among the people who showed up in riot gear, although there were no riots then.
There was a riot yesterday at the U.S. Capitol. The Capitol Police were not equipped in riot gear. They were not equipped for riots, although even civilians could see that a riot was coming their way. That was true for days beforehand. Any fool could see that a riot was at least possible and, more likely, that a riot was probable.
History has this lesson about riots, not a hidden lesson either but one that is well-known: Historically, police either allow riots or they join them, when they don't put them down.
The Capitol Police did not put down the Capitol Hill Riot of January 6, 2021. If history is our guide, that leaves just two options.
There have been pictures and videos of Capitol Police easing the way of the rioters into the Capitol. Only 52 people as of this writing have been arrested. Along with much of the rest of the country, I watched the Capitol Hill Riot on television. There were thousands of rioters to choose from, but only 52 were chosen. That says something about the enthusiasm behind making arrests following the Capitol Hill Riot.
The performance of the Capitol Police was not confined to just grunts. More were implicated than just frontline police officers. What happened is beyond the power of grunts. It is within the power of their leaders.
Don't always assume negligence as the cause of things. For four years now, negligence seems to be the default assumption about the cause of such events as we witnessed yesterday.
When the Capitol Hill Riot is investigated, perhaps it will instead be investigated by experienced people who doubt the easy assumption. Perhaps, at long last, it will be the Capitol Hill Riot investigation that works on inductive reasoning, which is the same tool that police officers use when they are tasked with investigating crimes: Inductive reasoning reasons from the specific to the general.
In the case of the Capital Hill Riot, we pretty much know that there was a riot and that the Capitol Police were nowhere to be seen preventing access to the Capitol (although there is a now-famous photograph taken at the time the rioters reached the House Chamber, showing some of the police inside the Chamber who pulled their guns but by then the rioters were already inside the building), and the Capitol Police were definitely not seen slowing the flow of any rioters coming in, let alone turning the rioters back.
That is what we know, all we know, at this early time in our investigation. Now, without assumptions, let's look all the way to where this leads.
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