This should be interesting.... you know things are desperate in the US when they remind everyone about the last time the British Army visited the White House on 'business'
Capitol Police Left Open Path for Chaos to Take Deadly Turn
One woman was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer, Metropolitan Police Chief
Robert Contee III told reporters on Wednesday night, without providing more details about the circumstances of the shooting. He said at least 14 officers were also injured, one seriously, during the disruptions.
Calm was eventually restored after the National Guard was called out and more than a dozen people were arrested. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a 6 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and later extended an emergency declaration for 15 days, pushing it just past Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, said the breach on Wednesday requires another look at the crowd security plans for Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
“I think, you know, that’s always a high security moment anyway because we’re outside and it has so many different targets to it. There’s always a significant security concern there,” said Blunt, the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
But Blunt told reporters that the events Wednesday “obviously means you want to look more; you want to take one more really hard look at what you thought your crowd security concerns might be for Jan 20.”
“It’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a number of people who are going to be without employment very, very soon,” Ryan said in a digital press conference Wednesday. He criticized “the lack of professional planning and dealing with what we knew was going to occur.”
Ryan, chairman of the House Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee, said he talked to House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving and Capitol Police officials about the long-planned protest as recently as Tuesday, and that it was clear demonstrators were not supposed to be “anywhere near the Capitol,” instead restricted to a nearby area to “protest and express your view,” Ryan said.
House Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, promised a review of Capitol security. “The breach today at the U.S. Capitol raises grave security concerns,” Lofgren said in a statement.
People who went up the Capitol steps should have been immediately arrested, and there should have been reinforcements ready to help, Ryan said.
“There were clearly enormous strategic and planning failures by the Capitol Police, by the sergeant at arms, and anybody else who was a part of coordinating this effort here,” Ryan said.
The then-unfinished building first housed Congress in 1800 and was famously overrun and burned by British troops in 1814, during the War of 1812.