Reply to Muriel Bowser

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

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Point well taken. I'm not super adept at this. Simply adding a thought. When Bowser "called up" a limited number of National Guard with zero riot control authority before this, my husband and I just shook our heads. We literally were like, "what is she thinking?" My husband is in the military and I have experienced (not participated in) many riots, including a few involving  bloodshed. DC is a complex city (I'm a DC native). If you call yourself Mayor, you have to straddle a lot of weird relationships and areas of domain. Metro Police and WMATA Police is just one example of law enforcement brokering. She has the  authority to both coordinate with Capitol Police and DOD, and to call up Guard. She should have seen this coming given the crowd, their social media postings and just the size and emotional tenor, and had more armed guard at the ready. Yes, the ultimate failure lies with the Capitol Police, but I am not giving Mayor Bowser a hall pass because she called in MPD after the fact.[/quote]

Just wanted to add and ask: Where did you get the idea that Mayor Bowser “has the authority...to call up” the National Guard?

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Words matter, and I take your point. She can "request" NG and describe how she would like them deployed. Let me flip it back to you, do you think she will "request" a larger force [b]in advance[/b] of the inauguration and share her views with DOD and any other Federal 3rd Parties on whether they should have riot gear? Or do you think she will shrug and say "whatevs". The 1/6 fiasco will be analyzed. Obviously, the Capitol Police Planning failed miserably and we want to know why. Since the title of this thread is MB however, I don't think she came out smelling like roses.  think she could have "requested" r a larger, prepared presence of NG in the city even if she was met with resistance by the Capitol Police. Who is to say the mob would have ended up at the Capitol anyway? They could have just as easily headed elsewhere and destroyed something else. What would the plan have been then? Better to be prepared.[/quote]

Yes, I think that Mayor Bowser will likely request a larger and more well-equipped force.  I'm sure that she will request this in advance -- just as she requested NG forces in advance of January 6th.  I think this is true in light of the failures of the NCP and other federal agencies and also because the scale of what the Trumpers seem to be planning for Inauguration Day is possibly going to be larger and is more likely to extend beyond the federal jurisdictions into areas of the city that she does control.

In response to your "what - ifs" -- in addition to calling up the NG, the first line of defense, obviously, were and are the MPD -- which Mayor Bowser does have the ability to call up immediately in a crisis as well as proactively -- again, as she did last Wednesday.

Mayor Bowser has not "shrugged" at any point in this -- in marked contrast to the leadership of the Capitol Police and possibly the DOD.  
I'm not sure why you're focused on how Mayor Bowser smells. Again, though, I'd like to point out that Mayor Bowser requested forces that actually were adequate for the tasks that they were responsible for.  In addition to that, the MPD -- thanks to Mayor Bowser -- ultimately were what kept the tragic fiasco from being even more tragic.

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