Before I begin, let me stipulate that everyone involved should be arrested and prosecuted. Charges ranging from very serious for some, serious for many, and lesser charges for the majority.
A couple of very important things occur to me:
1. The capital police did a great job of not escalating the situation. We demonize police for not being trained well enough to handle a situation where there are 1 or 2 people involved, why are we demonizing police for not escalating this situation? Sure, there may be some on that force that deserve to be fired for not doing enough, or just ceding their position, and possibly even simply allowing people into the building. That should be looked at on a case by case basis, but as a whole, I believe that with the limited force that they had, they handled the situation as well as could be expected. The question that I have to this point is, why was the force so small? Why wasn't security heightened to a point that would have stopped this from happening? Who is at fault for that fact? And most importantly, why wasn't this crowd handled like the BLM crowd a few months ago (not that the BLM protesters should have been handled the way that they were, but for comparison sake, I made that comment)? There needs to be a serious investigation into why crowd control was non-existent, and comparisons need to be made to past events.
2. Thankfully, there were very good emergency plans in place to protect congress and employees in the building. Having said that, it's a shame that those plans had to be activated. Shame on all of the participants for putting those people in that predicament.
3. It looks as though most of the people in the mob were simply sight seers. They were caught up in the day and the event and simply "went along". But... "going along" should definitely get them time behind bars, or probation with stiff penalties attached to the probation, and possibly very hefty fines.
4. There seems to be a small percentage who were organized and ready to do some real damage, and possibly even harm to members of congress if the chance had presented itself. Those are the people who need to be put behind bars for a very VERY long time. An example must be made of them, or we will see more of this in coming months.
5. I agree that the fairness doctrine must be re-implemented, and it must address cable "news", online "news", and social media. There must be some type of penalty for spreading false information that leads to an event like this taking place. At a minimum, I believe disclaimers need to be presented to viewers letting them know that what they are about to view is not fact based, but is being presented to them for entertainment purposes only. Something to at effect. I wouldn't know how to word it and certainly have no idea how stern the warning should be, but at a minimum, a disclaimer.
6. And most importantly, we now know that there are some very dangerous, and organized, groups in America who would do harm to our country and our government. This should be thought of as being a very fortunate, and final, wake-up call for action by law enforcement. They need to step things up and finally put some labels on these groups sufficient enough to warrant investigations.
I do believe that the event could have been far worse than it was. Thankfully it was a dud in a large pack of firecrackers. It needs to be thought of as a fortunate lesson learned, and one that must be taken to heart and acted upon.
That's one mans take on things.
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