Almost 30 police officers attended the Capitol rally. It should come as no surprise.
As investigations of last week’s riot at the US Capitol continue, one thing has become abundantly clear: The people involved were not just “fringe” elements, disconnected from the mainstream of society. Prominent among the rioters was a group with a lot of institutional and social power — police officers and other law enforcement officials. Indeed, nearly 30 sworn officers have been identified so far as attendees to the rally leading to Wednesday’s riot, according to NPR. That includes Virginia police officer Thomas “T.J.” Robertson, who was arrested this week in connection with the insurrection. “CNN and the Left are just mad because we actually attacked the government who is the problem and not some random small business,” Robertson reportedly wrote on Facebook after storming the Capitol. Those arrested also include his colleague Jacob Fracker, a Virginia police officer as well as a corporal in the state’s National Guard. “Lol to anyone who’s possibly concerned about the picture of me going around,” Fracker apparently wrote on Facebook. “Not like I did anything illegal.” The declarations are brazen — the officers’ disregard for the law on display, even though upholding it is supposed to be their job. And yet it should come as no surprise that members of law enforcement were in attendance at the riot. After all, it was an insurrection on behalf of a president who has made racism and xenophobia core to his administration and who has repeatedly fanned the flames of white nationalism. Moreover, it was intended to overturn the results of the election, upholding a false narrative about voter fraud that has sought to throw out the votes of thousands of Black Americans. Essentially, the storming of the Capitol was an insurrection to uphold white supremacy. And sustaining and propping up white supremacy have long been part of police officers’ jobs. After the end of slavery, police departments played a key role in driving mass incarceration and essentially weaponizing the idea of Black criminality, as historian Khalil Muhammad explained to Vox last summer. And in addition to reinforcing tenets of white supremacy as part of their jobs, police officers were often personally part of white supremacist groups. As historian Linda Gordon notes, police and other law enforcement officers made up a large proportion of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. So while it may be upsetting for many to see police officers as part of a riot that sought to overthrow American democracy — and that left a police officer dead — it should come as no shock that officers of the law might support the white supremacist ideology behind the riot.
