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How many barricaded doors must the police retreat behind before they are justified in opening fire? I think pretty much every armed conservative would have lit up a left-wing Ashli Babbitt if they found themselves in an analogous situation.
Ashli Babbitt did not deserve to die, in the sense that the punishment did not fit the crime. But that is true of most people killed in police / self defense shootings.
I think that this is an important point. Ashli Babbitt's death was the result of both her own criminal stupidity and culpably poor policing. Both were necessary, neither sufficient. "Police are not required to take risks to protect criminals from their own stupidity" is part of conservatism 101, and in the case of criminals threatening physical violence is also the law. "Police should be sufficiently competent that situations where the police need to shoot at idiots are minimised" is non-partisan good government 101, but is not a legal requirement for good reasons.
Ashli Babbit FAFO, but it was also a bad shoot. This is kind of like sure the guy was doing 30 mph over the speed limit, but the person he hit shouldn't have been dancing in the middle of a busy highway.
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I'm pretty sure it'd have been entirely possible to restrain and arrest her without resorting to lethal force. She was just an average White normie.
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"Barricaded doors" is doing too much work here. The fact of the Capitol riot is that the police were intentionally undermanned, and also engaged in basic incompetence at nearly every phase of the event. The long and short of it is that they never actually barricaded anything. The Capitol is essentially a medieval fort, and over a hundred armed men let it get sacked by a bunch of unorganized people essentially engaging in Brownian motion in the general vicinity of said fort. The fact that the whole force wasn't fired is...questionable. The fact that all of leadership wasn't is conspiratorial.
What was the defensive setup? Well, most of the police were deployed behind small lines of these things which are used for directing orderly lines of humans into an entrance, they are not appropriate for riot control. These are not barricades.
Because the forces were isolated and far from the building, they immediately began panicking and ran to the door. The doors were never closed or locked. Hardly a barricade. Again, the slow pushing mass of unarmed people overcame this "defense". Then we had some chaotically strewn furniture in hallways. Not really what we'd call a barricade either.
In the end, Jan 6 is the answer to a very specific question: What would happen if an understaffed, poorly trained, and even more poorly managed police force faced a crowd composed of people who could easily kill them all, but had absolutely no intention of actually doing so? Is Babbit's payout comically high? Yes. But that always is the case with these cases. She certainly has a pretty good case compared to the average rioter case. If she wanted that officer dead, he would be. She was, by all accounts, a competent combatant when armed, which she was intentionally not.
There is a sliding scale of "adequate". All the members of congress were unharmed and successfully certified the election despite a riot. Minimum viable standard, but still successful. Why would it be the responsibility of the Capitol police to handle an unprecedented riot better than the rioters themselves.
The straightforward conspiracy when guards are undermanned is "the guards are expected to fail at protecting what they are supposed to be guarding". A conspiracy plot to the effect that "the guards are supposed to look like they almost fail protecting congress from a riot in a way that makes the riot look extra bad and scary" is a conspiracy theory with additional epicycles. Did the nefarious conspiracy organize the riot, too, or was it counter-conspiracy organized in response to the planned riot to storm the congress conveniently organized by parties-unrelated to the nefarious conspiracy?
The fact that Trump had given orders to protect the rioters and thus National Guard was not in vicinity of Capitol puts a bit of evidence towards the first kind of conspiracy than the second kind.
Riots happen, or rather they can happen. Why they happen is based on a confluence of factors, but the police deployment and response is always an important factor. People rarely riot when law enforcement is well deployed and competently managed. This riot was not unprecedented in any way other than it was comprised of Republicans. The failings of the police force is basically the only interesting part about what happened.
Its not a conspiracy. We generally know what happened. The chief of the Capitol Police has testified to this many times. His deputy (who was promoted to chief after he was let go) was briefed about an increase in the expected crowd size and an increase in potential agitators in the crowd. She did not give him that information. Regardless, he requested additional troops including overtime and National Guard. Those requests were denied by leadership (Pelosi and McConnel's offices), possibly because he did not have the additional credible threat information, possibly just optics. Then as the riot developed he requested National Guard again, and this time both offices took about 5-6 hours to give him a response.
And in any case, conspiracy or not, who benefited from Jan 6 clearly the Democratic party and anti-Trump Republicans, so we don't need epicycles, just knowledge of how media coverage works and insight into the minds of Capitol leadership, which is not hard to divine.
Here is an actually conspiratorial idea, which is directly contradicted by tons of public evidence, but you seem to think its worth talking about.
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I mean what exact intent is implied by invading a Capitol and attempting to breech the doors of the legislature and ignoring multiple commands to stop? I would undertake the sympathy if she’d gone wandering around the roduntra with a sign or upside down flag, or if she’d been going into offices or something because those things do not represent the same sort of threat as attempting to invade the house floor as member of congress are fleeing. She clearly intended to do something by those actions and so did those with her.
If I were far more right-wing than I am and feeling snarky, I'd probably say something about the right to petition one's government here, but I'd generally agree with the "play stupid games" line in this sort of scenario. Maybe that particular argument would be different if members of Congress were known for ignoring their constituents generally.
But it's also not terribly out of line with the times for police shooting "unarmed" but hostile citizens: Ferguson settled with the family of Mike Brown — of "hands up, don't shoot" fame where forensic evidence suggests his hands were not, in fact, up — for a bit under $2M 8 years ago, which is not that different adjusted for inflation.
I think you can make an argument she was playing stupid games, but the public response to it is almost totally informed by 'Blue Team Good, Red Team Bad' factionalism. People who were vehemently pushing BLM and Defund the Police slogans a month before suddenly became totally cool with the idea of a justified shoot, whilst if Babbitt had been shot as an unarmed woman in a similar circumstance whilst say trying to approach Trump during a BLM protest or entering a capitol building she would be held as a martyr to the cause.
I understand why the Red team hasn't pushed her since they tend to be more accepting of violent consequences to 'fuck around and find out' but the handling feels deeply hypocritical on part of the Blue Team.
Ironically one of the loopier members of the BLM movement, Shaun King, was the only one who actually took a principled stand and said he thought the Babbit killing was a bad shoot and an act of police brutality.
Good man. Props to him even if we do disagree.
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I was writing a reply to zoink above but this is ridiculous standard. Yes, many on the left are hypocrites. Somehow, it is turned to equally hypocritical defense of a riot -- see, the problem with the riot is not the riot, the problem is that out-group who are all hypocritical angry when my-own-group does a riot but they don't care when their ingroup does it.
It is extra ridiculous because this being the internet, it takes no
effecteffort (ETA) at all to defend consistent standards for dealing with riots, left or right. Yet somehow the most important thing when discussing news of Trump awarding 5 megadollars to Babbitt family is complain loudly about BLM.Yes but Jan 6th aside from the location and the suggested vibe of 'If the control point of US democracy were held for 30 minutes by funny hat man, the entire USA would automatically fall under his control' was hardly even a Riot. People who were glibly encouraging far more Riotous riots and complaining about far more justified shoots suddenly dropped both principles in favor of pure team allegiance logic.
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