Speaking to the Jan. 6 committee, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the security failure on Jan. 6, 2021, was due to the misconception that radical right-wingers would be police friendly, HuffPost reports.
“People thought they were friendly to law enforcement and that they loved their country,” Bowser said in a transcript released by the Jan. 6 committee Thursday. “People didn’t think that these white nationalists would overthrow the Capitol building."
Over 100 U.S. Capitol Police officers and local Metropolitan Police were injured during the Capitol riot.
Bowser said that Trump supporters, who are overwhelmingly white, had already shown themselves to be aggressive with police in demonstrations and riots in D.C. in December 2020.
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“In December ... we had a flurry of these white nationalist groups come in and vandalize some of our churches; Proud Boys, so-called Proud Boys and the like,” Bowser claimed. “We had a lot of street antagonism and violence.”
“That was the first time we saw those groups really disrupt and vandalize, and were very aggressive with the police,” the mayor told the House committee. “I think our experience with them in December showed us that they were antagonistic to law enforcement.”