Capitol Police Change Direction, Get Massive Military-Grade Gift from DOD
The U.S. Capitol Police will soon begin to use military-grade surveillance equipment as the department uses the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion to justify becoming an “intelligence-based protective agency.”
Now that the barriers have come down in Washington, D.C., after no threats to the country’s capital ever emerged after the January building breach, the department must find new methods to ensure the building incursion doesn’t go to waste. Among those methods are for officers in the USCP to expand field offices away from Washington, as well as to focus on spying on Americans as seemingly yet another intelligence agency.
Do we need another politicized intelligence agency? Yes, according to the Capitol Police.
The USCP last week issued a disingenuous media release in which it essentially outlined how the Capitol will be protected from non-existent hordes of conservatives, you’d assume, who pose no threat to the country’s security.
It has been six months since the U.S. Capitol was attacked.
Here is an update on the future of the U.S. Capitol Police: https://t.co/JSKGsKmoRn pic.twitter.com/GrClcfL1AK
— U.S. Capitol Police (@CapitolPolice) July 6, 2021
“It has been six months since rioters attacked the United States Capitol and our brave police officers and law enforcement partners who fought valiantly to protect elected leaders and the democratic process,” the USCP said. “We will never forget USCP Officers Brian Sicknick and Howie Liebengood, who died after the attack, nor the sacrifices of the nearly 150 law enforcement officers who were injured.”
The department of course made no mention that neither officer was killed by violence. Officer Sicknick died from natural causes while a medical examiner said Liebengood died from a suicide days after the Capitol incident. Tragic as both deaths are, the politicized USCP is using them to justify rolling out new strategies to acquire more power and to keep a narrative alive.
“Throughout the last six months, the United States Capitol Police has been working around the clock with our Congressional stakeholders to support our officers, enhance security around the Capitol Complex, and pivot towards an intelligence-based protective agency,” the department said.
This new “intelligence-based protective agency” is also getting a little help from its friends at the Pentagon.
A media release from the Defense Department last month outlined how Capitol police will handle risk analysis with its help.
“Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin today approved a request from the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) for the Department of Defense (DoD) to loan surveillance systems to allow the USCP to improve U.S. Capitol security,” the department said. “Under this arrangement, the DoD will provide eight Persistent Surveillance Systems Ground – Medium (PSSG-M) units, on a reimbursable basis, for a period of one year.”
Additionally, per the DoD, the Army will install these surveillance systems and train Capitol police officers how to use them.
Now, the USCP will have night vision and who knows what else so it can assist the broader federal law enforcement apparatus in doing its new job: politicizing a building incursion in which some Americans walked into the people’s house and harmlessly took photos.
We have reason to believe some of that abhorrent photo-taking was done with the blessing of Capitol police officers. Some damage to the building was done by extremists, of course, but these new measures are all absurd — and deeply political.
In any event, whoever us running the USCP Twitter account was feeling nostalgic last week when they posted this image, which seemed to long for better days when the non-existent threat to the Capitol was being monitored by every man, woman and dog on the force.
TBT: Standing guard pic.twitter.com/E1w69SdLqb
— U.S. Capitol Police (@CapitolPolice) July 8, 2021
One person was killed on Jan. 6, and she was an unarmed military veteran named Ashli Babbitt whose life was cut short by an officer’s firearm. Meanwhile, the USCP is using the unrelated deaths of two cops to justify its pivot to an intelligence agency — as if we don’t have enough of those.
But Jan. 6 can’t go to waste. Democrats need fear surrounding the incursion to justify chipping away at civil liberties and to label patriotic and conservative Americans as enemies of the state.
The January Capitol incursion was not the country’s most shining moment, but is all of this necessary? Of course not.
Of all people, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said it best Monday about the narrative that Jan. 6 was the country’s darkest day.
“There is no question the media represented it as so much worse than it actually was,” Kelly said.
“There is no question the media represented it as so much worse than it actually was,” Megyn Kelly said about the Capitol riot.
Videos from Jan. 6 show violent attacks on officers, vandalized offices, and an attempt to find and hang former VP Pence. https://t.co/N285veyOr6
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) July 13, 2021
We all know the formula by now. Democrats wish to forever use a brief incursion where hundreds of people stood around — most of them peacefully — to potentially punish millions of conservatives forevermore. They’ve used the establishment media for that, as Kelly astutely pointed out. Now they’re using the USCP and Pentagon.
This is all about the optics of painting Republican voters as homegrown radicalized threats to democracy.
Now, we wait for the USCP, the FBI and other agencies to use the same Pentagon resources to protect Washington from the same left-wing rioters who did this last summer:
Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church by WH appears to have survived the fire from last night’s protests. pic.twitter.com/EGJTwtFGxG
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 1, 2020
…Lincoln Memorial and the World War Two Memorial have been vandalized. One of our most historic churches was set ablaze. A federal officer in California, an African-American law enforcement hero, was shot and killed. THESE ARE NOT ACTS OF PEACEFUL PROTEST. THESE ARE ACTS OF… pic.twitter.com/yCHHWYmtoG
— Dan Scavino Jr. Archived (@Scavino45) June 2, 2020
We shouldn’t hold our breath that these people will be apprehended using night vision or other tactics. Those people will never face justice, as efforts to “protect” the country’s Capitol are purely political.
The USCP, the Pentagon and the FBI have more in common with people who deface statues and churches than they have with freedom-loving Americans who vote, pay their taxes and simply love their country.
Millions of conservatives who were not even in Washington on Jan. 6 are arguably the target of a nasty smear campaign and the country’s top law enforcement agencies are shamelessly part of it. Anything is on the table when it comes to keeping the narrative alive.
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