Then there would be the question, of why there was no riot gear, when riots or riot-like situation could be expected. And since this was a planned event - and protestors openly planned to storm it - then maybe there should have been some better preparation?
And crowd control is indeed tricky, but it is still standard procedure for police.
You have fences.
You have lines of strong policemen with shields and tonfa.
You have tear gas.
Watercannon.
Beanbag.
Taser.
And ultimately, if rioters are indeed shooting or preparing to do so: there are guns with the police, too.
Many others brought the point: there probably would have been rivers of blood, if the black life matters movement, would have tried to storm the capitol.
That’s what I mean about odd that they don’t have a plan for this. I live near a top 50 city and the local police has crowd control equipment. Seems like the National capitol police would have some capability for this.
Certainly not shooting everyone.
This seems really strange to me. So the capitol police isn't staffed and doesn’t plan for a situation where they need to do both of these things?
What struck me the most is that the rioters seem like just a few hundred/thousand. Definitely scary but should have been able to be controlled by law enforcement. It wasn’t a million people or a zombie horde.
Their web site [0] says they have 2,300 officers and staff. So even if only half are officers it seems like 1,150 armed, trained capitol police should be able to control a mob of this size.
Certainly rioters trying to stage a coup is a rare event but seems like something that the capitol police should have contingency plans for.
Them saying that they had to choose between evacuating lawmakers and protecting the building seems like they need a lot of help planning.
[0] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/uscp-fast-facts