At 1:13 p.m. on Jan. 6, a D.C. police commander facing a swelling crowd of protesters on the west side of the U.S. Capitol made an urgent call for more officers in riot gear. “Hard gear at the Capitol! Hard gear at the Capitol!” Cmdr. Robert Glover shouted into his radio. Over the next 78 minutes, Glover requested backup at least 17 times, according to a Washington Post analysis of the events, and the mob on the west side eventually grew to at least 9,400 people, outnumbering officers by more than 58 to one.
The Post reviewed police radio communications, synchronized them with hours of footage and drew on testimony and interviews with police supervisors to understand how failures of preparation and planning played out that day.
At The Post’s request, a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University analyzed imagery to estimate the number of people outside the Capitol at precise moments. To visualize those numbers more clearly, The Post created a 3-D model of the Capitol grounds that approximated the crowd from a bird’s-eye view using data from the researchers’ crowd-counting software.
The examination reveals how police were hampered by an insufficient number of officers and shortages of less-lethal weapons and protective equipment and also provides a glimpse into communications breakdowns within the police response. Subscribe to The Washington Post on UKposts: wapo.st/2QOdcqK
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