I worked for the US Capitol Police for a couple of years and let me tell you, this was something we always knew was going to happen sooner or later. You received training, but you never really gained any real police experience since the job only involved manning checkpoints for the most part. So your day to day simply involved standing at one door or another, maybe running a x-ray machine, etc.
I was assigned to the US Capitol building itself for my entire time there and not once did we ever have a lock down drill or any other sort of training to secure the building or to get people out. You were told more or less what to do, but there was never any actual scenario styled training - it was all a crap shoot. We were treated like absolute garbage by the vast majority of the members of Congress and their staff - we were basically glorified palace guards/security guards. Heaven forbid if you actually did your job and stopped one of them because you didn't recognize them.
Moral was a total joke and when I was there, the average life expectancy of an officer was maybe 18 months or less. People got hired, got some federal training and status, and then moved on to a better agency. I had a graduating class of around 40 officers and within the first year, almost half of them quit and went to other agencies - it was that bad. In our little locker room, we used to write the names and ID numbers of all the people who left on the wall to show how many people had quit.
I routinely had to work 12-18 hour days (as did others) because they were always holding over previous shifts because some foreign dignitary or other guest was visiting. Their response was to throw bodies at it instead of trying to be efficient. Management was a joke since they simply tended to be the people who had stuck around long term and gotten the positions as a result - they were just as clueless as the rest of us on what to do during an actual emergency. Their day was basically walking around checking on our posts to make sure we weren't on our phones, had our stupid hats on, didn't have drinks at our posts, etc. They tried to give me one of the highest written reprimands once because I was outside on the terrace before my shift getting some air and didn't have my hat on. Only reason why I didn't was because I got the union involved and I was seen as one of the better people.
There is so much more, but what I'm basically hinting at is that the vast majority of that department hates it and is actively looking to leave. More than once our conversations hinted at none of us being willing to take a bullet or suffer any other injury for any of the Congressman or their staffs because of how we were treated. That coupled with a lack of training and experience set up a perfect storm which was unfurled on January 6th. Frankly, what surprises me the most is that more of the officers just didn't unload on the protesters. I think it was more of a genuine shock and not knowing what to do that prevented that event from turning into a mass LE involved shooting and bloodbath.
So with all of that being said, I can absolutely totally understand why anyone inside that building at the time would have resorted to simply standing by or even showing those people around since it was common practice to show tourists where to go anyway. I'm willing to bet that radio communication was a complete and total shambles and not every unit in the building used the same channel. So chances are that by time people were actually inside the building, they may have just assumed everyone was let in, etc. Even if not, it was probably seen as the safer thing to do by simply playing along with those people instead of being a lone officer trying to do the right thing. Even if someone had grabbed a protester and cuffed them, then what? There was nowhere to take them as we had no holding facility, no one to support them with the arrest, etc. I probably would have done the same damned thing in the interest of self preservation to be honest.
I haven't kept in touch with people I worked with, but I can only imagine what the immediate turnover must have been like immediately afterwards. I also half imagine a few people simply ducked out one of the doors on the other sides or took off down the tunnels underneath to get out of the area. All in all, it really was a miracle that it didn't end up a much worse situation than it was and more people weren't injured or killed.
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