States Blamed Capitol Police for Jan 6th Failures

A January meeting of mayors and police chiefs of large American cities criticized “failed leadership by Capitol police and a failure to plan” over the rightwing insurrection in Washington on January 6th, according to emails obtained by the website The Guardian.

The revelations were contained in an email sent by a senior police officer in Washington State. The email summarized a “US conference of mayors/major cities police chiefs to discuss the riot at the US Capitol” and “the potential for ongoing civil unrest related to the election outcome and upcoming presidential inauguration”.

Additional emails from local, state, and federal agencies show that following the attack, authorities in Washington State paid increased attention to far-right groups such as QAnon and the Three Percenters, as well as Joey Gibson, the founder of the street protest group Patriot Prayer. Gibson is a resident of Vancouver, Washington, a suburb just across the river to the north of Portland, Oregon, where Gibson and local police have been seen collaborating. Gibson was also the organizer of a long string of confrontational pro-Trump protests in Portland, Oregon, between 2017 and 2020. Many of the protests became violent, and some descended into riots.

The emails, provided to The Guardian by a non-profit group called Property of the People, show how the events of the attack on the Capitol sent ripples around the US, and how agencies in states across the country scrambled to monitor local far-right activists, track down locals wanted for their role in the insurrection, and protect their own state capitols from groups who were openly planning to breach them.

Capitol police condemned by US states for January attack failures, emails show

140 Capital Police injured.
4 dead.
Don’t blame the cops who put their lives on the line rather blame the insurrectionists, blame the instigators, blame the supporters!!! https://t.co/cRBToFttoG

— Jeff Tuttle (@Sybertuts) May 7, 2021

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Other emails show that even before the DC Capitol attack, analysts at the Washington State Fusion Center had been keeping close tabs on far-right groups and their plans to occupy the state capitol in Olympia.