One question that remains unanswered and that extremely needs to be answered: Why was Capitol police so understaffed and unprepared?

Theories have circulated that they wanted to let it happen or they thought MAGAs would respect a soft line, but both sit in the realm of individual opinion/choice, cop-by-cop basis. The massive beating those cops took, being fed to the wolves, hints at some structural failure.

Capitol Police boasts a roster of 2,200 officers. They had maybe 100 outside, most without respirators or shields. It’s the lack of equipment that hints to something beyond “they were in on it” or w/e.

Between the crowd showing up & the line finally breaking, there were several “lulls” where it seemed like they were trying to just wait it out. They didn’t have/use enough crowd control agents, they didn’t have a cohesive line — cops ran to different areas to reinforce.

Park police weren’t present. FBI wasn’t present. DC has 27 different types of police and it came down to CH & MPD, with 4 National Guards just.. standing.
It wasn’t until well after the breach that I saw about 100 MPD move toward the Capitol, and they weren’t in a rush.

I’m not super up on DC police but it evoked a film set: certain tasks can only be done by certain people, per union rules, meaning a bundle of cables will stay in the way for everyone to trip on until a specific grip comes over to move them.

But when the studio’s on fire, you don’t wait for the official fire guy to come put it out. The boundaries stop mattering. What matters is responding to the emergency and making sure it stops. People storming the Capitol seems like one of those things.

Not only is it baffling that there were barely *any* police to hold the outside of the Capitol, but that almost none pulled up to reinforce (outside that first round of MPD) and almost none had sufficient protective equipment or crowd control agents.

This article hits to the *effects* of the why but still no answers on the why. Closest it gets is command told them to treat it like a protest, only later finding out individually PBs said they were going to storm the Capitol. (Also it’s a very well-reported piece) https://twitter.com/corynwolk/status/1348159590618292226