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Violence Against Police on January 6th
The New York Post tells the appalling stories of two police who went to assist at the Capitol and were savaged by the rioters:
Officer Michael Fanone was on desk duty last Wednesday when he decided to join his fellow officers at the Capitol to control the rowdy mob, but what happened next, he says, was unimaginable.
Fanone, 40, was in a narrow hallway when the rioters dragged him out of the building and slammed him on the ground. They then stripped him of his gear, took his ammunition and his badge, he recalled in an interview with CNN.
The 20-year veteran of the force, who was also tased and beaten, remembered fearing for his life when he heard some of the rioters wanted to kill him with his own weapon.
And:
Fellow Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges was also assaulted during the violent unrest. He was seen on video being crushed in a doorway by pro-Trump rioters inside the Capitol.
Hodges can be seen bleeding from the mouth as he cries out in pain and screams, “Help!” DC police said he was recovering well.
While I find it a provocation to assume someone in a video is actually a “pro-Trump”, the Post has had a better record than many of covering the violence this year so I’ll move on with an acknowledgment that bad guys can likely be found on both sides while I await serious evidence. Regardless, I want to see all of these rioters brought to justice and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
When I was a college student I had a friend who was in the county police force. I worked nights at a convenience store and he looked out for us, especially when things were known to be hotter than usual. Until the night he answered an alarm at a department store and, hearing the screams of the manager who was being tortured, chose to go in before his backup arrived. They ambushed him and they tortured him before they killed him.
There are no angels among Eve’s children, and I fully support policing the police and reforming the rules they live under as needed. But this utter disregard for the men who report to work every day to keep us safe, knowing that they might never come home, is a disgrace whoever expresses it. The leaders in our feral cities have made our police punching bags for the criminals that would rob us, rape us, kill us, and burn down our homes. The swine that promote this recklessness and hate in our feral cities, I am talking to you in Portland, Mayor Wheeler, and you in Seattle, Mayor Durkan, and every other feckless civic leader from New York and DC to Los Angeles and San Francisco. What about Trump, some will ask? He will be done in five days, these other maggots will still be feeding on the rotting flesh of our feral cities. Remember that as their political allies preen over their victory against the bad orange man.
A properly lead police force is critical to the peace and safety of our neighbors, our congregations, our families, our children, and ourselves. They cover your back, so cover theirs, show your support. And offer zero tolerance and fierce opposition to the corrupt, anti-police politicians and their thugs.
Published in Policing
It was an interesting mob, Antifa agitators, militant Trump supporters, and people just desperate because they have been or are about to be ruined by government policies and so they are feeling hopeless. One rioter committed suicide after being identified, obviously at the end of his rope. Others, equally as crazy as the violent members of that mob still exist on both side. Their Antifa/BLM rioters will continue, having been excused by the politicians to act that way. Even if the politicians no longer want the rioting because they won the prize, they won’t be able to tame their monster. Rioters and those who sympathize with them on our side will only grow more angry because now they will feel closed in on all sides and ignored by both sides. Respect for the police who protect the capitol must never waiver for they are protecting it for us, too. Sadly, they are no longer respected by some, an extension of the disrespect they feel for a government that doesn’t respect them. The founders gave the central government limited, enumerated powers for a reason. One size doesn’t fit all, especially when the all is 350 million citizens and foreigners here legally and illegally. Blanket attacks on a whole race of Americans by Democrats has created a different monster on our side that they can’t control, and neither can we.
Well said @sisyphus. It does sound antithetical to everything I know about real Trump supporters, but like you said, there’s a lot of weirdos in a group of 75 million. There is also a number of bad cops in a group of several million. I suspect that if we really get to the bottom of the sad Capitol event, we are going to find a number of professional rioters were involved.
Watching the video at such close quarters was terrifying. People can speak about what happened with a level of intellectual distancing, but listening to and seeing the rage of the rioters, as well as the treatment of the police officers, was difficult to watch. Where do we go from here?
Animal -level rage is an Antifa quality. I don’t doubt most peaceful protesters were Trump supporters. I doubt if many the rabid ones were. That was feral males unleashing their hatred.
This is so terrible and criminal.
This is why I tend to be Old Testament-Biblical in my view of rioters. I think that the police need much more latitude to use serious force, even deadly force. In the current public climate, this is not a viable option. Even many conservatives, even here at Ricochet, conclude that police use of force against criminals, acting in quite outrageous ways, is some type of criminal homicide on the part of the cop.
It is a very unpleasant trade-off.
This has been going on since at least the 1999 Battle of Seattle, in which what is now styled Antifa succeeded in causing World Trade Organization delegates to fail to come to any agreement under the threat of street violence.
From an instapundit link. The Capitol Police are charged with protecting Congress, and have a pretty large force to deploy if they need to. They report to Congress, not the President. Even with warnings of potential violence, they only ordered a tiny force to be on site that day. One small enough to be easily overwhelmed by even a relatively small number of protestors. Not to mention some of them literally stood aside to let protestors into the building, which to me, seems an unfathomably irrational action.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/capitol-hill-riot-was-pelosis-fault-not-trumps-daniel-greenfield/
The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers. A police force dedicated to protecting Capitol Hill has more personnel in its service than the police forces of most of the country.
Congress’ private cops are the 19th largest police force in the country. It’s a larger force than the police forces of Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, or Milwaukee with a massive $460 million budget.
It’s the only legislative federal force in the country that is answerable exclusively to Congress.
While Democrats advocated defunding the police, their private police force budget shot up from $375 million in 2016 to $460 million in 2020. After the Capitol Hill riot, expect it to go higher.
Much higher.
The media claimed that the Capitol Police were overwhelmed by a massive riot. Except that the number of violent rioters was, at most, in the hundreds, while the Capitol Police could deploy a force the size that protects entire cities to protect a few buildings from hundreds of people.
It is amazing how easily the left flip the narrative making them the lover of police and our side the attacker.killer of police.
I was at the first “stop the steal” rally in DC in November. At one point a phalanx of DC bicycle police rode through the crowd at Freedom Plaza. The crowd cheered them. I personally talked to many DC police that day. They were unworried and very casual. I talked to many of my fellow protesters. I even started a conversation with an Antifa group. The Antifa were very quiet, due to being outnumbered about a thousand to one. Later that night, long after I had left, they picked off isolated Trump supporters and beat them up. It appeared that the DC police only interfered if lots of blood was spilled by surprised Trump supporters. Given the chance, the Antifa have been brutally violent in the past. The police are either tolerant or fearful of them. Or perhaps fearful of the internal police consequences of crossing them. Every violent Antifa rioter at Trump inaugural was releases without charges.
Of course I want to believe that the only people there who got violent were the ones there with Anti-fa. But if the statement “I have kids” had that effect on the people attacking this officer, then, let’s face it, at least his attackers were Trump supporters. Certainly the ones who protected him were Trump supporters.
Oh my goodness. The Frontpagemag article explains to me how and why this particular police force would be in, or many of them in, on a set up. (That, of course, isn’t what the writer is claiming. It is, though, what I was thinking after reading the article. Makes you think the one who got himself killed didn’t really understand what was going on. He wasn’t in the loop.)
I once lurked in an Alt Right group on Facebook and found that the bulk of them were hostile to law enforcement for their own set of reasons aside from those of Black Lives Matter activists. If these rioters were willing to go after a cop, just imagine what they would have done if they had gotten a hold of a lawmaker or two.
Not much difference between the two groups in personality, it would seem. Just different on issues.
One story says rowdy mob. Fact
Other story says pro-Trump rioters. Not fact, unless they did a thorough background check.
And since WE KNOW the FBI will falsify to accomplish their goals, we can’t ever know the truth.
That is all.