A Maryland police officer was convicted on Friday of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and hurled a smoke bomb and other objects at police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard two days of trial testimony without a jury this week before he found Montgomery County Police Officer Justin Lee guilty of two felonies and three misdemeanors. The judge, who also acquitted Lee of two other misdemeanors, is scheduled to sentence him on Nov. 22.
Lee, 26, ignited and threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a mob of rioters attacked a group of outnumbered police officers. The device struck a police officer’s riot shield and filled the mouth of the tunnel with a large plume of smoke, prosecutors said.
Once police throwing out/locking up the bad ones starts to become the norm, instead of circling the wagons and covering up each others’ crimes, we’ll start to see that distinction. In our universe in the present, however, the police, their unions, the prosecutors, and the judges all act almost in lockstep to prevent police from ever being accountable for any of their actions in almost all situations. Thus ACAB.
ACAB is short for “I hate it and I’m doing nothing about it.” Nothing positive or reformative, anyway. It’s the dismissal of a toddler. When the worst offenders have risen to the top, change can only come from outside political authorities removing them and uplifting those who’ve been shunted into powerless positions because they won’t participate. And getting robust actors into those political positions that can institute change is the job of the electorate.
(I mean staunch reformists, not Hugh Jackman, although he’s welcome to run for Mayor!)