Security at the US Capitol failed during last year’s insurrection largely because of the misconception that right-wing extremists will be “friendly” to the police, Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) testified before the committee 6 Jan.
“People thought they were friendly to law enforcement and they loved their country,” Bowser said in the transcript of the new testimony released by the committee on January 6. “People didn’t think these white nationalists would bring down the Capitol building.”
William Walker, the head of the DC National Guard during the insurrection, said on January 6, members of the committee that responded to January 6 would have been “very different” and harsher had the rioters been Black. He said many people in the crowd would have been killed by law enforcement, according to a transcript of his testimony released Tuesday.
“I saw enough to where I would have used deadly force,” Walker testified. “I think there would be more bloodshed if the composition would be different.”
More than 100 officers with the US Capitol Police and the local Metropolitan Police Department were injured that day. Five officers died after the attack, one from a stroke and four died.
Bowser also blamed the Defense Department for not responding sooner to the Capitol as rioters stormed the building.
Bowser spoke about the violence at the Capitol on the phone with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. “You saw what I saw; your Capitol was defeated,” he recalled telling her.
National and local law enforcement officials have been heavily criticized for failing to anticipate the scale of violence that day, despite numerous signs in social media posts and other online activity.
Part of that failure appears to be a pessimistic opinion about groups of Americans who share a risk of violence, Bowser said.
But Bowser testified that MAGA students – overwhelmingly white – have proven themselves to be increasingly aggressive with police in demonstrations and riots in DC in December 2020.
“In December … we had a group of white nationalists come and destroy some of our churches; the Proud Boys, the so-called Proud Boys and others,” Bowser recalled. “We have a lot of antagonism and violence on the streets.”
“This is the first time we’ve seen the group be really disruptive and destructive, and very aggressive with the police,” the mayor told the DPR committee. “I think our experience with him in December shows that he is antagonistic towards law enforcement.”
About 900 defendants have been arrested for crimes related to the storming of the Capitol on charges including trespassing, property theft and damage, assault and seditious conspiracy, among other offenses.