There is no denying that there are bad apples in the bunch, and that police culture favors bad actors, but we also have to acknowledge that there are many police officers who actually are there to “protect and serve”. It’s those officers who are made to suffer.
The District of Columbia’s police department on Monday said two more police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol have died by suicide, bringing to four the number of known suicides by officers who guarded the building that day.
Add to the tally the Capitol Police officer who was killed in the line of duty, and the 100 who were injured, and it’s clear that the 6 January Insurrection was more than a few tourists getting rowdy. This was a terrorist action. Those rioters were not good people.
During emotional testimony last week, four police officers told a House of Representatives special committee that they were beaten, threatened, taunted with racial insults, and thought they might die as they struggled to defend the Capitol against the mob.
Meanwhile, Republicans are squirming and lying and trying to pin the blame on anyone other than Trump supporters.
[Wisconsin Senator Ron] Johnson, one of Trump’s most fervent congressional supporters, has for months raised numerous questions about the circumstances surrounding the attack, including the security failures and the nature of the events. He has taken exception, for instance, with describing the attack as an “armed insurrection.”
In the recording captured Saturday, Johnson explained his view that “by and large those folks were peaceful protesters” and that the news media and Democrats are “painting 75 million Americans who voted for Trump as attached with domestic terrorists.”
It’s amazing. A nest of traitors is probably going to walk away scot-free from their actions.
Terrorist action?? Videos or it didn’t happen.
Oh wait….
Calling it now, there will be a conspiracy theory tomorrow that those suicides are actually murders perpetrated by the Democracts/Deep State/Hillary Clinton to eliminate witnesses and lay blame on Trump.
It’s not all bad. Some of them have had to put up with shit being thrown at them.
Insurrectionists, not cops. My bad.
@2: nah, they’re not real cops. Just crisis actors. That’s been on Facebook since the first cop died.
Also, Ron Johnson is a flaming douchecanoe and needs to be out of a job ASAP. I have never voted for that sniveling pile of excrement, yet he keeps getting re-elected! It’s maddening.
Well, I guess that’s an interesting way to say that Trump told a huge crowd of supporters to storm the capitol to subvert the election, so he could be installed as their dear leader (itself only part of a much more extensive effort to do the same); but in the end, only some portion of that huge crowd were actually violent and destructive and threatening to the members of the joint session of Congress at the time. The rest were apparently comfortable just standing there and watching it all unfold.
I mean, you can definitely paint that highly accurate and detailed picture for us if you really want to, but then you can’t at the same time ask us to not actually look at the entire thing. And we shouldn’t have to whack ourselves in the heads with a big mallet before we’re able to see it the way you want us to see it.
But if it’s a good painting, that’s not a real problem, is it? Anyway, I had already thought every single Republican politician is attached to something much worse, since at least the 1990s. So, I don’t know … maybe try to look on the bright side, treat it as a glass-half-full kind of thing. More people could after all see you for what you really are, and I know you certainly don’t want that.
Sort of a nitpick: it was either 74.2 million in the popular vote or 232 in the electoral college, depending on which picture you want to paint.
I entirely fail to see how many see this as a bad thing.
Republicans have actually stated how they want tourists to behave near them.
I’ll bring the boiling pine pitch, who has the feathers and fence rails?
Not everybody is getting away with it:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases
The case are percolating along and the charges are pretty serious. Quite a few are charge with obstruction of Justice/Congress for trying to block the vote. (A better charge than insurrection since it’s less political and you can show intent to stop the vote more clearly.)
As to Trump and Congress, time to subpoena Ron Johnson.
kurt1 @ #2, I saw tweets to that effect yesterday.
I was reading this morning that F*cker Carlson is in Hungarian fawning over Victor Orbán. He’s apparently a darling of the authoritarians in the US. Hungary has elections…so it’s “democratic”…but it’s mostly a show. Orbán has been the PM since 2010. He and his party are “nationalist conservatives” with some emphasis on “Christian values.” This is what we face having in the US, and Johnson, McCarthy, McConnell and a bunch of Republican governors and state legislators are striving to realize it. I suspect that as far as they are concerned, Trump is just a convenient vehicle and a phenomenal source for raising money…around $250million this year.
The Capitol Police claim Sicknick was “killed in the line of duty” but the actual cause of death is officially “natural causes”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sicknick-death-strokes/2021/04/19/36d2d310-617e-11eb-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.html
wzrd1 @ 7
Go for it!
When will Laura Ingraham give out her awards for best dramatic performance of a suicide?
She announced her best-acting awards for the four officers who testified, now that there are four officers who’ve committed suicide, her awards can’t be far behind.
Yes Sen. Ron Johnscum, there were security failures that were done by internal insurrectionists who bottled up the National Guard from coming in. There has been numerous testimonies of the red tape thrown up around emergency calls for intervention. Throwing these questions as distraction is going to keep you in the insurrectionist camp
re Johnscum:
Democracy isn’t a means to permit insurrection because a large number voted for the insurrectionist in a different election.
Voting for him to be president does not mean they all voted for him to incite an insurrection because he didn’t achieve the majority.
No matter how big, it was still not the majority. Johnscum does not appear to understand civil democracy
It is possible to be both incredibly grateful for the job that the police do and incredibly disappointed with how they do it.
This is why I’m cynical about everything but my idiotic fantasies. At least I can control those! But I’m definitely predicting some kind of “Civil War 2024” thing going down, except future generations (if there are any) will call it “The Stupid War” because that’s it exactly.
Well, there I did it. I wrote a comment. And it feels good! Catharsis has been achieved. That’s really the only reason I comment here from time to time: to make myself feel better. Not to convince anyone of anything, even if my comment takes the form of a (flippant) argument. Just thoughtless, self-indulgent blather. Cheers!
@bcw bcw, as soon as others produce the wood and feathers. Until then, it remains plan #1.
Suggest a meeting plane to fine tune and distribute ammo/ordinance, hammer it with a full MRS battery, aka the 1km grid square eraser.
Because, treason is what one does by even attempting what sedition planned.
Frankly, plan A includes kicking the lot back together to eliminate the insanity actors..
I’m really big on peace and quiet.
Wow. Props to PZ for realising that perhaps not all cops are bastards.