Trump's Support Of Cops Pays Off: Multiple Police Officers Under Investigation For Illegal Invasion Of The Capitol Building
from the enjoy-those-federal-building-sentence-enhancements,-lawboys dept
At the beginning of his term, President Trump promised he’d turn regular America into police-loving America:
President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.
But cops kept being cops and the “dangerous anti-police atmosphere” continued. Actually, it escalated. When a Minnesota cop pressed his knee into the neck of an unarmed black man until the man was dead, the country exploded.
Voters decided Trump was no longer worthy of leading the nation. In response, Trump claimed the election had been stolen and insinuated the only way to keep America great was to overthrow anyone who stood in the way of Trump being President for another four years — even if the electoral college vote and the popular vote said otherwise. Following an incendiary “rally,” Trump supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building to stop VP Mike Pence and the Senate from certifying the election results.
Fans of peaceful transitions of power were horrified. Trump supporters overran the Capitol, stole documents, took selfies, destroyed property, attacked Capitol police officers, planted explosive devices, and otherwise made it clear that opposing Trump meant inviting violence.
Some people disingenuously speculated that this was the boiling-over point for disenfranchised (mostly white) Americans who felt beltway insiders and coastal elites had sold them out to special interests and political correctness for years, elevating the plight on non-white Americans and foreign interests ahead of their own constituents.
The attendees of this rally-turned-raid likely included some of the supposedly disenfranchised. But it also included — in large numbers — the same sort of “elites” and “special interests” the allegedly disenfranchised were warring against in their proxy, Pyrrhic war on the Capitol.
They were business owners, CEOs, state legislators, police officers, active and retired service members, real-estate brokers, stay-at-home dads, and, I assume, some Proud Boys.
[…]
The members of the mob that attacked the Capitol and beat a police officer to death last week were not desperate. They were there because they believed they had been unjustly stripped of their inviolable right to rule. They believed that not only because of the third-generation real-estate tycoon who incited them, but also because of the wealthy Ivy Leaguers who encouraged them to think that the election had been stolen.
This wasn’t an uprising by the downtrodden. This was a mass tantrum led by people with plenty of power and/or money.
Let’s not forget that five people died during this “protest” over electoral college votes — the same electoral college Trump supporters claimed was sacrosanct when it handed him a victory over Hillary Clinton, despite Trump losing the popular vote. This is what led to five deaths. And this is what will likely lead to increased domestic surveillance and has already converted Washington, DC into a war zone patrolled by the military.
This is apparently the America Trump supporters want. And some of the biggest Trump supporters are the same people we pay (and trust) to keep the peace. Trump spent four years unabashedly supporting law enforcement, no matter how awful their acts and violations. In return, police officers showed Trump they had his back… by breaking the law and assaulting [checks the goddamn tape] police officers.
Several police departments across the country have opened investigations into cops among their ranks to find out if they were involved in the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Washington, D.C. on January 6th.
The growing number of probes follows an announcement from the Seattle Police Department on Friday that two of its officers have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that they were in the nation’s capital during the raucous events.
Seattle wasn’t anomalous. It was indicative. Similar investigations have been opened in Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.
And those four states aren’t an anomaly. Here’s The Appeal with updated numbers:
[Update, Jan. 14, 5:15 p.m., Eastern time: One more law enforcement officer has been reported as having attended the Jan. 6 rally, bringing the total to 29 officers from 13 states.]
There’s a spreadsheet tracking law enforcement officers’ involvement in violating federal laws. It includes officers who have been reassigned, suspended, or are still under investigation for their participation in this half-assed attempt to overthrow the part of the government these officers don’t like. It also includes federal officers, including at least one Secret Service officer who made public Facebook posts encouraging the attack on the Capitol Building.
And it’s not just the “left-wing” media reporting this. Here’s an article from pro-cop site The Police Tribune.
Two Rocky Mount police officers have been federally charged for being inside the U.S. Capitol at the time of the Jan. 6 riot.
A veteran Houston police officer is also expected to be charged for the same behavior, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told KTRK on Wednesday.
And this report from BuzzFeed is fucking unreal. It’s not often a cop tells another cop the beatings will continue until morale improves.
The [Capitol police] officer even described coming face-to-face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.
“You have the nerve to be holding a Blue Lives Matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” he told one group of protesters he encountered inside the Capitol. “[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”
The War on Cops continues.
This isn’t irony. It’s hypocrisy. Too bad it’s a human trait and we have to rely on the human race to staff our law enforcement agencies. It would be nice to see the police align with the populace in the event of an actual revolution. But this wasn’t a revolution. And it featured cops siding with themselves, willing to stomp any other law enforcement officer standing in the way of them invading and looting a federal government building to prevent a lawful election from being certified.
Yet another reason we should never trust cops. When push comes to shove, police officers will push, shove, and assault anyone who stands between them and their goals — even if it’s another law enforcement officer. Cops don’t just dislike the people they serve. They dislike anyone who keeps them from doing what they want.
Filed Under: capitol, donald trump, insurrection, police, riot
Comments on “Trump's Support Of Cops Pays Off: Multiple Police Officers Under Investigation For Illegal Invasion Of The Capitol Building”
Plain for everyone to see…
It’s been painfully clear for the longest time that "Blue Lives Matter" really only meant "Black Lives Don’t Matter" and the siege on the Capitol had proved it.
Re: Plain for everyone to see…
Nice and pithy, but I actually think it means more. It means things like "How DARE you interfere in how we do our job, using the flimsy excuse that you pay us!"
Re: Re: Plain for everyone to see…
"Nice and pithy, but I actually think it means more."
Both of your examples turn out to be way past their sell date. Today "Blue Lives Matter" just means "Are you looking at me, Punk? Huh? Want me to bust your chops?".
It reflects the way US law enforcers connect to the community they patrol today.
Our local version of this
From the Live Free or Die state, one of my local State Representatives made the following tweet after the "incident":
The police chief from Troy was in fact at the Capitol that day. Instead of lawmakers looking in to what other NH officials attended and what role they may have played, the rep was stripped of her committee assignments and censured.
Re: Our local version of this
Well, nice of the other reps to make clear which side they’re on in the insurrection/the government and will of the people issue, you certainly know who to vote out come next election.
Republicans: Blue lives matter.
Also Republicans: We will not bail out blue states (using money the blue states pay in taxes) so they can meet their public sector obligations and pay for policing.
Republicans again: Donald Trump cannot be convicted of crimes he’s openly committed and law enforcement officials are partisan, left wing scum for suggesting it even if they’re registered republicans, we will threaten their lives and those of their families to show how we back the blue!
Republicans too: We support the right wing protesters who beat a cop to death unless we’re pretending they’re all Antifa today.
Re: Re:
Don’t say Republican. These are Trumpists. They believe they have been wronged (though it’s hard to see how, exactly, given that they have a disproportionate amount of political power) and they worship Donald J. I’m not sure they have an other values any more. Between the Christian Right conspiracy to take over the Republican movement (a real thing, not even hidden by the members of the conspiracy), the Tea party movement – supposedly unpartisan, but in reality entirely contained withing the GOP – and Trump, I’m not sure there is a Republican movement any more. There are still some who hold to the 20th century traditional republican values, but they are marginalized. Unless the non Trumpists can win back their party, I fear the US is in for a long, and unhealthy, period of single-party rule with an extremist rump republican party in perpetual and bitter, obstructionist opposition.
Re: Re:
We generally call them “Democrats”.
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No, democrats hold 20th century traditional soviet values
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
No, democrats hold 20th century traditional soviet values
You have an extra comma in there.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Whoever is telling you that, I advise you stop listening to them, as they’re either lying to you or they don’t understand politics.
Re: Re: Re:2 20th-century traditional soviet values
Out of curiosity, what specific traditional soviet values are these?
Care to name three that match the US Democratic platform?
Re: Re: Re:3 20th-century traditional soviet values
As with "socialist" or "communist", the term "soviet" is just something these people are told are bad. They don’t understand the words themselves, but they know they’re bad, and since they’ve been told that there’s only two possible "teams" then those bad words must apply to those other people.
The fact that by the standards of these people Reagan would have been labelled a communist doesn’t matter – they’re not looking at the meaning of the words, they just mean words as labels to apply to the people they’re told they have to oppose.
Re: Re: Re:4 Things that are bad.
Aw, man, but I gave him an open-book test. I figured he might learn something.
Re: Re: Re:5 Things that are bad.
" I figured he might learn something."
The 74 million can’t be taught. They’ve proven that conclusively by now. All you can really do is cast them out ans oppose them at every election and every turn the way they have done to anyone sane or educated. Until, hopefully, the next generation turns out to not be stark, raving mad.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
[Citation required]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Democrats" is not really a sensible label since the U.S. political system does not really allow distinctive political interests to have separate party representation, like in other democratic systems where government by a coalition of smaller parties representing different interests tends to be the norm.
Those Republicans who have not reached the point of "I stand for values traditionally represented by the Republican party and still getting more reflection in the current Republican party, but this has gone too far" while getting pushed towards it, are currently labelled "Republicans in name only", in the cynical "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" up-and-down logic so popular with Republican leadership.
Arguably the Republican party has switched into "Republican in name only" mode long ago with the adoption of the Southern Strategy of hoovering up racist voters that the Democratic party gave up representing in Lyndon B Johnson’s time. Eisenhower was probably the last Republican president willing to stand up for those values distinguishing Lincoln’s Republican party when splitting off from the Whigs, culminating in the civil war around the goal of freeing the slaves.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
In a country considered to be a Democratic Republic, where there are two dominant political parties called Democrats and Republicans – the names of said parties are not sensible?
Why? Because … "the U.S. political system does not really allow distinctive political interests to have separate party representation"
Does not make sense
"like in other democratic systems where government by a coalition of smaller parties representing different interests tends to be the norm."
Ohhhh – you are claiming that we should not imply the political party called Democrat have anything to do with democracy the political system. I can’t say you are wrong. It follows that the political party called Republican has nothing to do with Republic the political system.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
"In a country considered to be a Democratic Republic, where there are two dominant political parties called Democrats and Republicans – the names of said parties are not sensible?"
Not really. The names don’t really reflect anything, the platforms of the two parties completely reversed during the Southern Strategy so that confuses people ignorant of history when they try referring to it, and if you read the point he’s making appears to be that there should be more than two viable parties, not that the names are the main problem.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Yup. More than two parties would be interesting of there were ranked voting.
If political party names reflected what that party was bout … the trumpies might be called The Lying Out Yer Ass Party. Republicans might be The I’m Lost, Please Help party and the Democrats might be called The Two Faced Back Stabbers Party.
Re: Re: Re:5
Nah, Republicans would be “Own the Libs at All Costs” Party.
Re: Re: Re:
Nah. I remember the teaparty, i remember the birtherism, I remember the attacks on the left for not being patriotic for not supporting an illegal, immoral war, I remember Newt Gingrich’s turning lies and smears into an art form, I remember the Clinton witchhunts, both Blll and Hillary, I remember welfare queens, I know the southern strategy, McCarthyism and the John Birch society were things whose influence in the GOP can be seen in the party today.
There was no takeover, no sudden shift when his name was put on the ticket. Trump is the final stage of a disease that the Republican party has had longer than I’ve been alive, the party shifted far enough to the right that his behaviour became acceptable, and they purged virtually everyone willing to compromise long before he even considered running for office.
They scraped off the thin veneer of bipartisanship and fiscal conservatism in the Obama era, now the mask is off entirely. These are your parents republicans without the dogwhistles, Trump proved they can get a large chunk of the vote by saying the quiet part loud.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That’s an excellent nut-shell.
I’m so going to steal that.
Re: Re: Re:
Don’t say Republican. These are Trumpists.
Both are accurate at this point I’d say. The republican party had it’s chance(many, many chances) to distance itself from Trump, to say ‘That is not us and we do not support it’, and instead they embraced and protected him, making clear that Trump absolutely is a member of the party and showcases it’s ‘ideals’. At this point ‘republican’ is ‘member of Trump’s party’, and if someone doesn’t like that label applied to them then they’d best find another label to self-identify as, because that one is almost certainly permanently tainted.
Re: Re:
I mean, these “non-Trump republicans” (which is at most GOP) don’t get to pretend that they haven’t had a part in enabling this situation. If you voted for R legislative rep or senator, you’re still part of the problem.
Re: Re: Re:
"If you voted for R legislative rep or senator, you’re still part of the problem."
It reminds me of something I keep reading recently. If you have 5 Nazis at a table and a new guy comes in and joins the conversation but doesn’t want to rock the boat, what do you have? Six Nazis.
It’s all well and good saying that you never supported Trump now, but if you didn’t say anything in the last four years, you’re still a Trump supporter whether you like it or not. One of the very few things that Trump has been truthful about in his presidency was when he whined that he got more votes than any sitting president in history. He still lost, of course, since his opponent also smashed records for votes. But, if you voted R in 2020, you still voted for Trump whether or not you secretly believed you were voting for something else. The rumours are that this whole period is destabilising the party enough so that they will either make major changes or split. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s up to the people of that party to decide whether they will stand up for principles, or just blindly continue voting for the letter rather than the platform or the person.
Stolen?
But, someone forgot to find a theif. Oh, I will agree, that it was stolen, by the voters. They won this time. It was not dominion, or the other systems, it was the unpresented number of eligible voters who showed up, and cast their vote. Two years of 24×7 politics, later…and people are browbeat enough to vote for some peace. Yeah…oh, and for those interested, blackboxvoting.org back about 2000 had several exposed on es&s voting systems. They had proven theft tactics.
Re:
And in Republican-controlled states, they often showed up in spite of lawmakers’ efforts to suppress voting.
If someone wants to talk about stolen elections, tell them to look at the election for the governor of Georgia between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams in 2018. I mean, Kemp (then the Georgia Secretary of State) was allowed to oversee the same election in which he was a candidate. That alone is enough to raise a bunch of red flags. But the voter suppression that went on prior to Election Day was even worse.
(At least Abrams achieved a measure of revenge two years later. ????)
Re: Re: Re:
"And in Republican-controlled states, they often showed up in spite of lawmakers’ efforts to suppress voting."
This is worth noting. Beyond the suppression and gerrymandering and all the other tricks that go on in a normal year, there were clear efforts to disenfranchise people this year, whether that’s Trump’s stooge being installed to dismantle the post office’s ability to deliver postal votes or attempting extra restrictions on who could vote outside of lining up on the day during a pandemic.
"If someone wants to talk about stolen elections"
My mind always goes back to 2000. The whole race came down to Florida, the main race involved questionable decisions (handing chads!) that seemed to affect largely Democrat leaning areas, and the governor was the Republican candidate’s brother? Recounts were stopped by the court for reasons that were questionable even at the time, and recounts after the fact showed that Gore would likely have won if they had continued?
The US has pushed for countries to be invaded for less fishy elections.
(At least Abrams achieved a measure of revenge two years later. ????)
…and did so in style!
Just goes to show...
It just goes to show that unfortunately, the type of people most drawn to serving in law enforcement appear to be those with an over-sized sense of self worth and a desire to bully those around them. Give them the ability to wield deadly weapons and little to no accountability and this is what we get.
It appears that the system won’t be fixed until it is rethought from the types of people allowed to serve all the way up to the systems built around them.
Re: Just goes to show...
Perhaps, but I think it is more likely that the failure to constrain and/or discipline the bad actors has too often created a toxic culture, where actually serving and protecting is formally or informally punished and oppressed.
This is what the "a few bad apples" mindset creates – a barrel-load of bad apples.
Re: Re:
Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of the full saying: “A few bad apples spoils the entire barrel.”
Re: Just goes to show...
Particularly their unions. Unions can be a force for good but more often they themselves become corrupt and none are more corrupt than the police unions.
Re: Just goes to show...
If you want some interesting (and scary) listening, the Behind The Bastards podcast did a series last year about the history of policing in America. The host Robert Evans is a potentially annoying and off-putting character, but I’ve never had any major issue with his research skills or his ability to get across the issues he’s dealing with.
Imagine that, corrupt cops would joined a failed insurrection in an attempt to keep in power a corrupt politician who declared that police are never the problem, it’s all that uppity public whining about the beatings/murders.
Every cop, or hell anyone who is paid by taxpayer dollars, who is found to have joined the failed insurrection needs to be loudly and publicly named and ‘shamed’, fired and blacklisted from ever working a government job for the rest of their lives. Someone willing to try to overthrow the government and will of the people has absolutely no business being paid by the public or given any sort of authority over it.
Just remember:
It isn’t the cops who happened to be in Washington DC that day.
It isn’t even the cops who attended the rally.
The ones you want to discipline are the ones who attended the "after party".
And, btw…
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This is a terrible article. I hope there are no police officers around when you really need one.
Re:
An opinion without a reasoned explanation for holding it isn’t an opinion — it’s reactionary horseshit. So maybe explain what you think makes this article is “terrible”.
Re: Fuck You
In my 33years in the hood, not having a "Peace Officer" show up is a godsend. The only guns in my face (or gun that i’ve seen) have been LAPD controlling me on this property in broad daylight. The only blood i’ve seen has been splatter by a "perp" they found in this yard at night, the only kids ticketed have been children on bicycles & young people face down on 110 degree asphalt. The only gun death was a 14 year old, LAPD told me "We were following the car that did it", the only comment LAPD has for me is "Why Do You Live Here?" The cops lost their "back-up" pistol (i found the ankle holster on the yellow line, slipped off the patrol car roof?) so "School Police" emptied every classroom at the High school & took each class full of kids 5 blocks, locking the whole school in the Sports Stadium till midnight: not one word in the "Press".
Started as slave patrols & still preforming today.
Re: Re:
That’s the right wing attitude to law and order and government in general there for you, folks. ‘Don’t criticise us, or we’ll use machinery of power to punish you.’
Re: Re:
That’s a lovely democracy you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.
Re: With 'friends' like that...
It’s always telling when someone’s response to corrupt cops having their actions exposed and criticized is outrage(real or feigned) and acting as though police in general are being criticized, all the more so if that’s paired with a sledgehammer-subtle wish for suffering to befall those calling out corrupt cops.
Re: Re: There's that whole tolerating thing...
When the police in general tolerate bad officers without even a Dude! Not cool! then it really is a police in general problem.
But in this late hour, I bet the tolerators are getting outnumbered by the brutalists, the sex-assaulters, the confiscators and the ones that get high in the evidence locker.
Re: Re: Re: There's that whole tolerating thing...
Oh I’m all in on the idea of ‘a good cop who covers for a bad cop isn’t a good cop’ which leaves a vanishingly small percentage of cops on the US as actually ‘good cops’, my point is merely that if objecting to corruption or abuse of power is treated as objection to police then the objectors have basically just argued that corruption and/or abuse of power are not just outliers or exceptions but core parts of US police forces, which makes for a rather odd form of ‘defending’ them.
Re: Re:
"This is a terrible article. I hope there are no police officers around when you really need one."
When might you need to call one .. when you are being kicked out of a business due to not wearing a mask?
I’m not being arrested .. I’m not being arrested – as they put on the cuffs.
I read that in some neighborhoods, where you would probably not be found, people are more afraid of the police than they are of the street thugs.
What do you say to the officer(s) that just stand round while you need assistance? Do you insult them until they do what you demand?
Re: Re: Re:
I live in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and I’m more afraid of the cops than I am some random thug(s). I know how to deal with random thugs. I don’t know how to deal with a thug with a badge, a gun, a shitty attitude and the backing of their union and our legal system.
Re: No police around when I need one...
Adding police to any situation is kinda like adding an angry rhinoceros or a California wildfire.
Yeah, I hope they’re not around when I need one too.
Re: Re: No police around when I need one...
Angry, burning, rhinoceros…
Well, that’s a mental image I’ll spend the day scrubbing from my brain..
Re: Re:
"This is a terrible article"
This is where an intelligent person would detail the problems they have with it, and enable discussion to inform others, and to assure that he didn’t just waste his time by commenting. So…
Re: Re: Re:
"This is where an intelligent person would detail the problems they have with it…"
Hmm. not to nitpick but that’s like advising the crew of the Titanic about the importance of having the deckchairs in order as the bow of the ship slips beneath the waves.
Bear in mind that what Shel10 is implying, above, is that criticizing law enforcement just because a large number of their active members, from all states, and at all levels of command – from beat cop to prosecutors – supported insurrection, then investigating the police is still anathema for which you need to be PUNISHED.
We don’t even need to know the reason as to why he thinks the article is "terrible" unless what he means is that it doesn’t go far enough. And given his recorded history of blindly siding with the police and trying to make former officer Chauvin a hero for killing that ‘junkie animal’, George Floyd, I somehow doubt that is what he’s trying to get across.
Let’s just note that Shel10 is openly out as being on the side of the revolution here. Just that like every other troll on the alt-right side he’s far too much of a dishonest coward to fess up his unstinting belief in authoritarianism ûber alles.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I’ll just note that you provided vastly more information on what you imagine he might have a problem with than he bothered to provide himself. I’d rather the guy complaining provides his own argument than you provide your imagined version of what it might be.
Re: Re:
Needn’t hope, it’s damn near guaranteed. Cops don’t prevent crime- though that has to do with the reality that most people are victimized in private settings. And I can think of a few examples where cops were called to respond to a violent situation where say in NYC the cops didn’t even get out of their car and rolled on by, leaving no possibility that the mother of an infant would survive her estranged husband’s attack, or in a southern state (I can’t remember which) when neighbors called for help when they saw a man attacking his ex-girlfriend, the cops claimed that they couldn’t find the address and made no efforts to call dispatch or stop their circle jerk long enough to show up and stop the man from not only brutally murdering the young mother, but also their two or three small children, and even moving their bodies. FFS, none of these cops faced as much punishment as a fast food worker who forgets your fries, and innocent people died.
And don’t forget cops all over the country piling hundreds of thousands of rape kits up in closets until some ran out the statute of limitations, and made up bullshit excuses for never testing them. Your badge-licking garbage is profoundly ignorant. I hope a cop is around the next time you think you need one and you get a taste of why calling them almost always results in them making the situation so much worse. Hint, they don’t give a fuck about you and will treat you like a non-compliant suspect just because you are distressed over a crime committed against you.
Re: Re:
Why did the capitol police take so long to kick the terrorists out?
Half of them had to change back into uniform first.
Trust?
No. We’re not supposed to trust law enforcement. Plato wrote about this 2,000 years ago, and the same concerns exist today. We rely on them and hope for the best, but there also is (or should be) oversight and accountability when they (inevitably) do the wrong thing.
Re: Trust?
Or in a language spoken by an imperial city-state that came after Plato,
"QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES?"
Re: Re: Trust?
I’m sure there were a lot of alt-right trolls even back then who, like Shel10 , restless94110 and the other stormfront refugees around here, would counter that pithy quote with "The watchmen shouldn’t be watched. They can do no wrong!"
But it’s particularly upsetting to see that crowd come out swinging in the defense of the police officers who off duty decided to storm the capitol, poop on the floor, and beat another officer on duty to death for trying to defend his post.
There is no depth to which the alt-right will not willingly sink.