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kleinbl00  ·  1175 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Video shows fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol

I've seen it argued that the DC police response was so... restrained because there were a number of members of the DC police force attending the rally as participants. As such, the DC police force was handling the situation with kid gloves in part because those are their buddies out there and in part because they presumed that with their buddies out there they could shape the narrative in such a way that things didn't go batshit.

I believe this video illustrates the problem succinctly: the cops this side of the door see this as a minor issue that won't amount to much, while the cops at the other side of the door have been training their whole lives to protect their charges against armed terrorists.

Two minutes in, someone starts yelling "there's a gun" as if this is somehow surprising. At any point up to two minutes, one of those cops could have said "could I have your attention, please? There are armed men beyond this door who will shoot anyone who comes through it and we will be powerless to stop them" but no such action was taken. 2:16, a plainclothes does what the plainclothes was obviously about to do, which is obviously what he's been hired to do and trained to do. 2:31, a tactical guy in riot gear with an M4 select fire assault rifle points it at the plainclothes and you can watch his world melt: he's about to pop off some perps and he tries to gesture the gunman to the ground and realizes that holy shit the gunman has him outranked, has done his job, and that all this shit is suddenly real.