How the Police Contributed to the January 6th Insurrection

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Many individual police officers acted heroically on January 6th. But the successful attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, seeking to disrupt the certification of the electoral votes, remains one of the biggest policing failures in American history. Not only did the Capitol police fail to prepare for the attack, but many members of the mob were themselves police officers from around the country.

To talk through the many reasons behind this failure, Alan Z. Rozenshtein sat down with Vida Johnson, an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law School and the author of a recent Brooklyn Law Review article and companion Lawfare post, exploring the tactical and structural policing failures that contributed to January 6th.

Alan spoke with her about what the police should have done differently, and the role that race and politics play in how police react to domestic extremism.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Vida's Brooklyn Law Review article - https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol87/iss2/3/

Vida's Lawfare article - https://www.lawfareblog.com/policing-and-siege-united-states-capitol

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:55.6	I think that they underestimated this largely white crowd.
1:16.8	People tend to think of white people as being more sympathetic towards the police, especially
1:23.8	in contrast to the Black Lives Matter protests that had been happening and are calling on
1:28.9	our communities to write size or even abolish police.
1:34.2	Unfortunately, the Capitol Police mistakenly believed that these folks were their friends
1:40.7	and allies.
1:42.1	I'm not the only one who feels that way, even former MPD chief Ramsey acknowledged it as
1:47.6	well saying that there's really no other way to look at it other than this was a result
1:53.5	of unconscious or implicit bias.
1:58.5	I'm Alan Rosenstein and this is the LawFair podcast July 5th, 2022.
2:04.3	Although many individual police officers acted heroically on January 6th, the successful
2:09.4	attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to disrupt the certification of the electoral
2:14.0	votes is one of the biggest policing failures in American history.
2:18.1	Not only did the Capitol Police fail to prepare for the attack, but many members of the mob
2:22.4	were themselves police officers from around the country.
2:26.0	Vita Johnson is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law School, an author of a recent
2:30.6	law review article and companion lawFair post exploring the tactical and structural policing
	...

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