Off-duty police were part of the Capitol mob. Now police are turning in their own.
During the chaos at the Capitol, overwhelmed police officers confronted and combated a frenzied sea of rioters who transformed the seat of democracy into a battlefield. Now police chiefs across the country are confronting the uncomfortable reality that members in their own ranks were among the mob that faced off against other law enforcement officers.
At least 13 off-duty law enforcement officials are suspected of taking part in the riot, a tally that could grow as investigators continue to pore over footage and records to identify participants. Police leaders are turning in their own to the FBI and taking the striking step of reminding officers in their departments that criminal misconduct could push them off the force and behind bars.
The reckoning within police departments comes as plans for new demonstrations this weekend and on Inauguration Day are solidifying, with authorities warning of the potential for violence in state capitals. Participants are expected to protest election results that made Joe Biden president-elect.
e to his involvement in the riot, which followed a rally at which President Trump urged his supporters to not accept his defeat. “However, engaging in activity that crosses the line into criminal conduct will not be tolerated.”
The revelation that officers participated in the chaos was the latest hit for law enforcement’s reputation, coming on the heels of a year in which police violence spurred nationwide protests and activists called for cutting police funding. As photographs and videos of some off-duty officers at the riot emerged on social media, some residents back home felt betrayed, while police officials worried about a black eye for the entire profession’s credibility.
Acevedo, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said the behavior is so egregious that it is often fellow officers who are alerting police chiefs and others to their colleagues’ participation in last week’s mob attack on the Capitol.
It marks a notable break in the so-called “blue wall of silence,” an aspect of police culture that encourages officers to turn a blind eye to misconduct by fellow officers. Craig Futterman, who directs the University of Chicago Law
Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project, said the Capitol riot was different.
“The ‘Code of Silence’ is fundamentally about loyalty to your fellow officer and that ‘no one understands what we’re going through but us,’ ” Futterman said. By contrast, there’s something “fundamentally anti-police” about storming the Capitol, he said.
That
fellow police officers were the target of much of the mob’s brutality is another important factor that may have prompted whistleblowing.
U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick was among the five people killed as a result of the riot. Dozens of other police officers were injured.
Police departments across the U.S. open probes into whether their own members took part in the Capitol riot
While some officers have said they were merely at the rally, rather than participating in the riot, others were found to have gone farther.
In Rocky Mount, Va.,
the presence of two officers in the riot, which included displays of the Confederate battle flag, came to light after a colleague and another city official leaked photos of them inside the Capitol to an area activist. The president of the local Black Lives Matter chapter posted them on her Facebook page and one of the officers quickly defended himself and threatened future violence.
“A legitimate republic stands on 4 boxes,” Officer Thomas Robertson, 47, wrote in response on his Facebook page. “The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box and then the cartridge box. We just moved to step 3. Step 4 will not be pretty...I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. Im about to become part of one, and a very effective one.”
Robertson and fellow officer Jacob Fracker, 27, were both arrested Wednesday by the FBI and are so far the only
law enforcement officers facing federal charges, which include one count each of “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority” and one count each of “violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.”
A Washington Post analysis shows that at least 29 current and former officers attended the Jan. 6 rally, with some proceeding to the Capitol, according to a review of officers’ social media accounts, FBI reports and news reports.
Of those, at least 13 officers are under investigation for possible participation in the rioting, as well more than a dozen Capitol Police officers who may have assisted the mob that seized the Capitol.
The officers — and at least one police chief — came from tiny departments with less than a handful of officers to large agencies with thousands on their force.
Reports of police among the rioters at the Capitol has police leaders worried about erosion of the public’s trust in law enforcement.
“It creates an issue where the public has a hard time believing that the . . . decisions they make off duty do not impact their choices and decisions they make while on duty,” said Andrew Walsh, a deputy chief with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. That force is investigating reports that “employees” may have been at the Capitol, he said.
Police keen on Trump
Since the start of his presidency, Trump styled himself as a champion of law enforcement who would restore to policing a level of respect, freedom and power he perceived to have been diminished under President Barack Obama.
Even before Trump declared himself the “law and order candidate” at a 2016 campaign event, he portrayed use of force against racial justice protesters and suspects in police custody as virtuous: As a candidate, he offered to pay the legal fees of his supporters who assaulted protesters disrupting his rallies. Not long after taking office in 2017, he told a crowd of police
not to worry about injuring the people they arrest.
In the four years of Trump’s administration, he has reversed police reform efforts and curbed the use of “pattern and practice” investigations into police departments for civil rights violations — something that had been a staple of the Obama-era Justice Department and is expected to resume under Biden. Police were keen to return the favor when Trump ran for a second term with many police unions enthusiastically offering their endorsement.
Dennis Kenney, a former police officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said he was “not too terribly surprised” police were among those at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the riot, citing what he called “some pretty strident” police union support for Trump and “an authoritarian sort of regime.”
Police unions and policing groups backed Trump in the 2020 election, with the head of the National Association of Police Organizations last summer deeming him “the most pro-law enforcement president we’ve ever had.”
However, union leaders said they are shocked by how some of their members appeared to cross the line at the Capitol. They also said officers who breached the Capitol should not expect their unions’ support in their legal battles.
“We took an oath to protect the constitution and the rule of law,” said Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police. “When people decide they are going to violate that — they are alone.”
Two rioters claim Capitol officer told them, ‘It’s your house now,’ FBI says
Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said he had joked with Acevedo about how absurd it would be for any of the department’s 5,300 officers to be involved in the mob that stormed the Capitol.
He said the resignation of 48-year-old Tam Pham, after having been identified as having been at the Capitol, has not changed how he is communicating with his members. Griffith believes the line some officers crossed is so bright, it doesn’t need to be explained to the rest of the force. Attempts to reach Pham were not successful.
“We took an oath to uphold the law, not violate it,” Griffith said. “You have to have common sense and walk away. Think about it. There are [Capitol] officers being beaten. How, as an officer, do you not help out? How do you not understand that you shouldn't be there?”
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