(Let me add to Free's correction slightly.)
You mean being too gentle with the armed terrorists. And, very much agree to disagree.
The woman killed assaulting our capital building today was an Air Force veteran, who had therefore sworn an oath to support the Constitution whose provisions she was busy trying to undo. In my book, that makes her a traitor.
Besides, as Bronxie noted today, the reason you often don't see the police and right-wing extremists together is the same one why you don't see Superman and Clark Kent together.
I think we're approaching this with different assumptions about how the police should behave.
In the UK, police officers, like anyone else, are allowed to use force, including deadly force, if it is reasonable, given their understanding of the circumstances at the time, to defend their lives or the lives of others. If it's not reasonable, then the force used is unlawful, and that makes it a criminal offence -- assault, attempted murder or murder.
I understand that, at least in theory, the law is not dissimilar in much of the US, including Washington DC.
Since we know that only four people died during the course of today's shameful scenes, three as a result of medical emergencies, apparently, and it's not wholly clear who shot the Air Force veteran, it's hard to see whose lives -- their own, or those of members of the public -- the police failed to protect by not using force -- certainly the death toll would have been considerably higher if they had, and would probably have included both police officers and civilians other than protestors had the protestors returned fire (as it would have been very reasonable to fear they might).
The Air Force veteran might well have been a traitor (though I doubt her actions could be said to meet the legal definition of treason contained in the US constitution) and she almost certainly was committing several crimes by her presence, but what of it? The police would have been justified in using reasonable force to apprehend her, of course, but that's all. Her punishment, if any, should have been a matter for a court, not the police.
The problem is that US juries seem all too willing to accept police officers' accounts of how, in an unclear, highly charged, and fast moving situation, they feared the defendant might have been moving to draw a gun, even though he or she was unarmed and the gesture was completely innocent, and even in circumstances where a British jury might well have taken a different view of how reasonable the use of force was.
Tuesday's events demonstrated that, when they want to be, the police in the US are perfectly capable of managing a very dangerous and highly charged situation, where it was certainly reasonable to presume many of the suspects were armed, with minimal casualties -- things could have been far worse, and probably would have been had the police started shooting.
I want to hold them to that same standard when they deal with other members of the public, especially ones who are black.
I really think that Americans and Europeans (including Brits) have very different assumptions about how the police should behave, and when they are justified in using potentially deadly force, and this reflects itself in how they are trained and equipped which, in turn, is why so few people die each year at the hands of the police in most counties compared with the US.
To my mind, today helps demonstrate the advantages of the European approach to the use of force by the police, but I don't want to argue with you about it -- how the US is policed is none of my business, since I don't have to live there.
I'm just saying that the restraint show by the police today almost certainly resulted in fewer lives being lost than would have been had the Capitol Police decided to start using their firearms, and I find it difficult to criticise them for their restraint, as opposed to condemning for failing to show similar restraint in other situations when the suspects are black.
I want them to be made to show similar restraint in all circumstances, and trained so to do, not criticised for failing to use their firearms when they clearly didn't need to.
But let's agree to differ about this. You have to live with the US police and I don't.
