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Comment by saberdancer | Hacker News Reader

As far as I can tell, there were police officers on the other side of the door (where Babbitt was). Police officer shouldn't have shot her. His life was not in danger.

I'm against the storming of Capitol, but this type of shooting should not be allowed.

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Agreed, police officers should rarely be shooting anyone. And certainly not those who are merely trespassing.

There are plenty of options for stopping a person going into a place, that don't involve executing or seriously wounding them. It should be a grave concern for every citizen that the police generally have so few qualms about firing their guns at people.

The police should have attempted to deescalate this situation with a minimum of violence - not the maximum.

I guess you think the police should just let those 'mere trespassers' get close enough to the representatives to pose for a photo? Maybe hold the camera?

For some reason I have seen a vide of the shooting and it looks like the person shooting is in a suite? Is it normal that police officers wear a suite?

They reported that it was a plain clothes police officer. My guess is that some of the Capitol police wear plain clothes. They are usually not in public.

I think in this case it's not only about your life beeing in danger, try this at any milittary base and the chances of getting shot are also quite high i guess.

Yes, but the difference is here that the police obviously let the protestors inside the building. Once that happened, the police and protestors were mixed and there was no real power struggle. Police looks like they were keeping an eye, but no one was fighting. This guy who shot turned a situation that could have been handled with a baton into a deadly situation. He could have created a worse situation, imagine if a protestor had a gun behind this woman and a gunfight erupted.

Completely unnecessary.

While i completely agree that this was all unnecessary and a complete fuckup (Trump not calling the national guard, police clearly had a shitty tactic) But i don't think you can hold this "let them in" up high. They didn't invite them in, they let them in because of fear of beeing overrun/escalation. If a mob is in front of your house and threatens to burn it down if you won't let them in, there is no claim you invited them in If you do out of fear.

They should have blasted them of the stairs with watercannons, but idk what the plan was.

I mostly agree with you. Police should have blasted them off the stairs and/or held the cordon at the top of the steps. It would be easier to do and should be easily planned for. If someone died there while trying to break through it would be much more understandable than this.

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