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Ashli Babbitt and Broken Windows
Ashli Babbitt is, as far as we know, the only person to die as a direct consequence of a deliberate act of violence during the riot of January 6 in Washington D.C. She’s the young woman who was shot by an unnamed Capitol employee while climbing through a window in the Capitol Building.
Ms. Babbitt was able to climb through a window because the window had been broken by rioters. Rioters broke the window in plain view of armed Capitol Police, who made no visible effort to stop them. (This can be observed in the short video made in the minutes leading up to and culminating in the shooting.)
The rioters weren’t very good at breaking windows. Some of them punched the windows repeatedly with their fists, gradually cracking the apparently reinforced glass. One used a thin stick, perhaps a broom handle, to poke and dislodge the cracked glass. It was a rather pathetic performance by a not very impressive mob — most rioters appear to me to be young and, frankly, wimpy — but, since they met no resistance from the police present on the scene, their clumsy efforts eventually paid off.
Broken windows. I don’t know why the police allowed the windows to be broken. I don’t know what those on the scene thought would happen after the mob succeeded in breaking the windows: surely a reasonable expectation would be that some would attempt to enter the room beyond the windows. What were they thinking?
What the rioters were thinking, I’m sure, is that there was no penalty for breaking windows. That’s what I thought, watching them. Perhaps they were surprised by that, as I was. But I’m sure it was a surprise for all concerned (other than for the guy with the gun hiding on the other side of the wall) when the penalty for climbing through a broken window was revealed to be a speedy execution.
Murder rates skyrocket around the country following a year of broken windows. It will be blamed on racism, rather than on what it is: bad governance by cowardly public officials.
Published in Law
Lethal force, time and again, has been claimed to be a LAST RESORT or necessary if life is at risk.
NO EFFORT was made to stop the protestors from coming into the capital. No effort was made to push them back. No effort was even attempted to stop them from breaking the glass. And none of them were armed.
So no, not “lethal force”, unless the protestors were engaging in lethal force themselves. But they were not.
To escalate to lethal, there must need be some other force applied.
It may not have even happened.
But messaging from the left is that ONLY rioting works to affect change. Word from congressmen is that rioting is all that works.
It should not be any surprise that some subset of the right, with the prodding of a handful of the left, should have thought this was ok.
Messaging through 2020 has been that this behavior is ok and good and necessary.
Yeah, that little unarmed woman could do a lot of damage to a manly man like Mullin . . .
There are a lot more than three.
4) There are multiple videos and witness accounts stating that the police removed barricades and that the crowd was let into the building.
5) Nothing immediately before or immediately after the shooting squares with normal police activity.
6) We still have almost no information about any of the main actors involved – not the officer who shot, the officers who casually walked around with their backs to rioters as she lay on the ground dying, or the civilians.
There are way more questions that need answered but they never will be because no one is really concerned. Everything that day was about optics, not truth and certainly not justice, just like with the Floyd case. It was a thing that served a purpose, now on to the next thing.
Well, it’s from The Guardian.
By herself, maybe (and only maybe) not. But she was the first one in a mob. What should the mob have done? What should she have done?
I simply cannot understand why the unfortunate death of this woman has become something of a casus belli on the right. It seems to be the same thing as the unfortunate police-involved shootings we hear so much about. I’m sorry all of these incidents occurred. I’m sorry people are dead. But it’s pretty rare that the deceased is an innocent person behaving as he ought.
Resisting arrest can turn out bad. So can breaking into buildings. I’m certainly not saying any of these people deserved to die, but I can’t get in a twist about it, either.
Because it highlights the sheer hypocrisy of the Dem/Left/Media axis of evil.
And this is the first time I can ever recall that such an event happened where the person who pulled the trigger has been kept anonymous.
You are saying that these individuals may not have deserved to die. Yet Ashli Babbitt, weaponless, is dead. I think that casus belli is something of an overstatement, but there is plenty of fodder for asking questions and wanting answers, which is what’s going on.
I think Ashli is a poor choice for a poster girl. When you participate in a riot, you should expect to get shot and killed. In fact I encourage it. Every state should have a law that any person not rioting is allowed and encouraged to shoot and kill anyone who is in a riot.
Wrong.
So you are in favor of riots?
No, but I certainly don’t think that people who participate in them “expect to get shot and killed.”
I think that’s the surest way to discourage rioting and encourage the rule of law.
^ On the one hand, that’s overkill.
On the other, people do seem to think they can engage in violent protest and never face consequences. So it’s good to remind them that there are consequences.
I’m pretty much on Skyler’s side on this one. I don’t agree with his suggestion, in #40, that state law should allow and encourage non-rioters to shoot rioters. I do understand his sentiment on this point.
I think that Skyler and I have someone else on our side. John Adams, who successfully defended the British soldiers who justifiably shot American rioters in the so-called Boston Massacre. I think that Adams had the right side of this argument, and that modern disagreement is in error.
Accidents happen all the time. Intentional “accidents” as well. Frankly this was most likely of the second type. It served a purpose everyone knew to be important to the left. You can’t count on a bunch of conservatives to do the things you need to pull off an appropriate tragedy, so you plan carefully.
My principle issue is with using the “rule of law” to justify a violation of the “rule of law” as we know it today. There is a fair amount of jurisprudence in the rule of law on when the use of deadly force is justified.
First of all, thanks to Zafar for the link to the WaPo video. I hadn’t previously seen video of this part of the riot, when the windows were broken at the entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby, apparently about a minute or so before Babbitt tried to climb through one of the broken windows and was shot.
I found that this WaPo video supported my prior conclusion, that the shooting of Babbitt was justified and proper.
Hank, you and I are generally in accord on most issues. I find myself in very serious disagreement with your conclusion on this issue. I do not think that there were simple ways for the cops to stop this rioting crowd, using less than lethal force. I think that they did not expect such a crowd, and didn’t have enough cops present.
I think that your assessment of the tactical situation is incorrect, at least at the very end. I may be misinterpreting your point, and I’ll address that later.
I think that when the windows to the Speaker’s Lobby were actually broken, with a small line of cops (3, I think) actually standing in front of the doors while rioters reached between them to break the windows, the cops were exercising extraordinary restraint. I think that they had good reason to do so, at that moment. It’s a bit hard to see on the video, but I think that there was a crowd of a good 20-40 rioters/trespassers just a few feet further back down the hallway. Those 3 cops did not have any way to control a crowd of that size with less-than-lethal force. On the other hand, drawing their guns could have led the crowd to rush them, and firing could have: (1) caused a much worse death toll, and (2) nevertheless caused the crowd to rush them.
Hank, I also disagree profoundly with your suggestion (in #4 above) that there was plenty of room for the cops to allow the crowd into the Speaker’s Lobby, and then deal with them by non-lethal means. They had a makeshift barricade behind those double-doors. What do you think that the first one or two rioters entering through the broken windows — and Babbitt would have been the first — would have done if the cops backed off again? I think that they would have removed the barricade, allowing another 20-40 rioters past the very last defensible position.
[Cont’d]
It’s not a riot if you’re invited in.
Hank, I do agree with you about something. You wrote:
From this, I do not conclude that Babbitt’s killing was unjustified. I conclude that more people should probably have been shot, both at the Capitol and in the riots last year. I do tend to agree that a more forceful response to last year’s rioting may well have prevented the Capitol riot.
I have a couple of final disagreements with your last comment quoted above. First, you wrote that the firing officer “was out of sight and not engaged with Babbitt.” It is clear, on the WaPo video, that other rioters yelled about the cop having a gun. Babbitt was only a few feet away, and should have heard that warning. It’d not clear whether the shooting cop gave a warning to Babbitt, as he was further away and the rioting crowd was a bit loud.
Second, you wrote that the cops should confront people when they “start breaking windows,” and that they should “[m]ake the threat of lethal force” and “point guns at them if necessary.” This is what the Capitol cop did. The cops in front of the broken doors/windows didn’t do so, because they were in too close proximity to the rioters.
I suspect that Babbitt knew about the gun being pointed at her, though I don’t think that we’ll ever know for sure. I think that she was completely confident that the cop would not shoot. She was wrong.
This gets back to my agreement with you, but the problem isn’t the shooting of Babbitt, which was justified. The problem was the prior response to rioting, which creates a poor incentive due to insufficient police forcefulness. And the problem isn’t really the police. The problem is public second-guessing of the police, and even criminal prosecution. Again, this creates all the wrong incentives.
Yeah, and that jurisprudence is largely Leftist nonsense, in my view. Take Tennessee v. Garner, rejecting the common-law rule that allowed police to kill a fleeing felon. 6-3, Burger court, with a good dissent by O’Connor, Burger, and Rehnquist. I find that the 60s radicals on SCOTUS were completely wrong, and I reject their conclusions. You know the ones — Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Warren, and usually Stewart.
I find this to be the problem. You may support that jurisprudence. I think that it is a serious error.
All the cops on the same side of the door as her, and all of the cops she passed getting up there, and those leading them up there didn’t seem to think lethal force was warranted.
I think that this is nonsense.
First of all, not all of them were “invited in.” I saw scenes of people trying to beat up cops at an entrance. It does appear correct that people were allowed in at another entrance.
But more importantly, even if “invited in,” when you start breaking windows, it’s a riot.
In many cases, they could be seen holding the doors open, waving many protestors inside.
As I stated on another post, and @hoyacon repeatedly pointed out, unless there were special ROEs in effect the use of deadly force is not justified unless the officer or others are in immediate danger of grave injury or death. It’s what makes the shooting of the girl in Ohio last night justified (unless new information come out), while the shooting of Philandro Castile was not justified.
From the videos I’ve seen, that case cannot be made that a reasonable person would conclude he/she were in immediate danger of grave injury or death. The only one who was in immediate danger of grave injury or death was Ashli.
If this was a good shoot, why hasn’t the DOJ released any information? Why haven’t they explained why the use of deadly force was justified?
Doesn’t this contradict your premise about it being nonsense? If not “invited” what word would you use to describe uniformed law officers removing barricades, waving people forward, and others standing aside and nodding to them as the entered? Encouraged? Facilitated? Allowed? Enabled?
Reminds me of the blind sages trying to describe an elephant from the single part they could touch.
Riots are not uniform and constant in their make up. Walking through a removed barrier is fine. Smashing windows and climbing through while a cop is shouting at you to stop is not fine.
I disagree about Philando Castile. I think that the evidence showed that he was reaching toward a gun.
The so-called mob she was with included police. Why didn’t they restrain her? The mob couldn’t all squeeze through that opening at one time. Nope, this was cold-blooded murder in the first degree – death penalty worthy . . .