While police at the U.S. Capitol continue to face scrutiny for failing to control the violent mob during Wednesday's insurrection, a study from CNN proves that the officers' passive approach was a far contrast from law enforcement's treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters last summer.
The report concludes that police in Washington, D.C. arrested more than five times as many people at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, compared to the number of rioters detained during the invasion at the Capitol Building. The District police, who made 61 "unrest-related" arrests on Wednesday, apprehended 316 people on June 1 when protesters took to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd, CNN reported.
"It's so, so insulting to racial justice activists that have been bringing attention to Black lives that have been lost," Anthony Lorenzo Green, one of the activists leading the Black Lives Matter DC group, told the network. "The way they chose to secure the Capitol was to let everybody go — they let these people back on our streets."
Videos and images which were widely shared on social media during the chaos on Wednesday indicated that officers allowed the rioters to walk through.
Not since 1812 has the U.S. Capitol been attacked.
Watch this.
Watch the sedition committed by Capitol Police officers.
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund must resign today. pic.twitter.com/2TkAaXL3P3
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) January 7, 2021
Echoing the sentiments of many social media users who instantly noticed the disparity in policing, Green said it would have been a different situation if Black Lives Matter protesters had tried to enter the Capitol instead of the predominantly white pro-Trump crowd.
"We would be shackled, we would be carried away, we would be shot, we would be dead," the activist said.
Metropolitan Police Department said 56 of its officers were injured in the mayhem on Wednesday. However, during the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, 21 of the department's officers were injured in a 10-day span. The violence at the Capitol also resulted in the death of Officer Brian Sicknick and four other people, as Blavity previously reported. In comparison, the George Floyd demonstrations in D.C. during the summer didn't result in the death of any officer.
A 39-year-old man accused of rioting and unlawful entry at the Capitol was the only person who faced a charge specifically listed as a felony after the chaos, according to CNN. On June 1, however, at least 29 people were arrested on felony charges. It was also another brutal night for Black Lives Matter protesters on Aug. 14 when police issued felony rioting charges to at least 37 people who were chanting the names of those killed by officers.
President-elect Joe Biden noted the disparity during a press conference on Thursday.
"No one can tell me that if that had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol," Biden said.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) has requested documentation of communications from the Capitol Police. As the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the police department, Ryan said he is working on compiling information to be used in an investigation to determine whether there was "some level of support on the inside."
"That will be thoroughly examined. I saw those videos. So like I said, you had people fighting their hearts out getting hit over the head with a lead pipe, and you had people letting people in and moving those silver barriers that were there. And then you had others taking selfies with these terrorists," Ryan told The Hill.
As Blavity previously reported, supporters of President Donald Trump raided the Capitol Building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes from the 2020 election that favors Biden. But Congress reconvened later on Wednesday to certify the election, staying up as late as 4 a.m. the next morning, as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told Blavity.
