Multiple Capitol Police officers have been suspended following Wednesday’s riots, one of them being the officer who was captured taking a selfie with a Trump supporter.
According to NBC News, Acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman—the temporary replacement for Steven Sund, who resigned last week—said the suspensions were the result of an internal investigation, which turned up evidence showing some officers violating department policies.
Perhaps like this video?
Pittman hasn’t publicly announced the exact number of officers facing suspension, only that there are “several.” Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan, who chairs the subcommittee that funds the Capitol Police, added that one of the other suspended officers had worn a Make America Great Again hat and started “directing people around” the Capitol. Ryan also said that somewhere between 10 and 15 additional officers are being investigated as part of the probe into officers’ activities on Wednesday.
It would seem that there’s a lot to investigate! Other video footage appeared to show some officers opening gates and doors to allow rioters to breach the Capitol; a New York Times piece reported that one officer provided a group of protesters with directions to Senator Chuck Schumer’s office. One rioter told CNN, “The cops were very cool. They were like, ‘Hey guys, have a good night.’ Well, some of them. It’s just crazy. It’s really weird. You can see that some of them are on our side.”
Yeah, weird…
The Pittman-lead investigation is focused on the behaviors of individual officers—at least that’s the impression I get from this press release—which means it hardly begins to account for the immense collective failure of the Capitol Police to protect the Capitol. (If that’s at all what they intended to do!)
I feel certain we’ll hear more about many other Trump supporter-apologist cops very soon.