Off-duty police officers among rioters, one Capitol officer says
The officers are accused of covertly flashing their badges
This week, a Washington D.C police officer has come forward to make some stunning allegations about off-duty police officers and even some members of the military being among the rioters who took part in Wednesday’s siege.
According to Politico, the officers in question covertly flashed their badges and identification cards at on-duty officers as they joined in on the attempt to overrun the US Capitol.
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“If these people can storm the Capitol building with no regard to punishment, you have to wonder how much they abuse their powers when they put on their uniforms,” the officer making the allegations wrote in a public Facebook post.
Despite other accounts corroborating this assertion and numerous videos circulating on social media of officers fraternizing with the rioters – at times even stopping to take selfies with them – D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee maintained that the department was unprepared for the violence.
Thursday, Contee said in a press conference that there was “no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the U.S. Capitol.”
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Nonetheless, the Capitol Police’s failures have prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to request chief Steven A. Sund’s resignation. Sund, who is now expected to resign on January 16, said in a statement that while his men had a “robust plan established to address anticipated First Amendment activities … these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”
“We have to do a full review of what was taken, or copied, or even left behind in terms of bugs and listening devices, etc.,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) of the security breach.
“If this were an organized, fully intent terrorist group — and there were certainly terrorist activities yesterday, but I mean, al Qaeda style — they could have killed a lot of representatives and god knows what else,” Gallego pointed out. “There has to be a full accounting of what happened here.”
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