NYT: The Capitol Police and the Scars of Jan. 6 - but they'd vote for him again
On the morning of Jan. 6, Caroline Edwards, a 31-year-old United States Capitol Police officer, was stationed by some stairs on the Capitol grounds when the energy of the crowd in front of her seemed to take on a different shape; it was like that moment when rain suddenly becomes hail. A loud, sour-sounding horn bleated, piercing through the noise of the crowd, whose cries coalesced into an accusatory chant: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Edwards, who is 5-foot-4, tried to make herself look imposing. Behind a row of bike racks, alongside four other officers, she stood in a wide stance, her hands on her hips. A man in front of her whipped off his jacket as if he were getting ready for something, flipped his red MAGA hat backward — and then the rioters were pushing the bike racks forward as the officers pushed back, trying to hold their balance.
A sergeant standing closer to the Capitol looked over just in time to see a bike rack heaved up and onto Edwards, whom he recognized by her tied-back blond hair. She crumpled to the ground, head hitting concrete, the first officer down in what would prove to be a bloody, bruising battle, the worst assault on the Capitol since 1814, when the British burned the building to the ground. The crowd howled and roared, rushing past the barricade as that sergeant started screaming into the radio orders to lock all Capitol doors.
Edwards’s blue cap had been knocked from her head. Once she got back on her feet, she stood, dazed and leaning on a railing for support, her hair loose and disheveled, as rioters flung themselves past the barriers, her colleagues punching back the few they could. Officers around the building heard, over the radio, an anguished call distinct from any other they had encountered on the job: “Help!”
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Nicole’s husband was one of a handful of officers still on medical leave in November. He and Nicole were deeply private people devoted to family, church and their children’s team sports. They were Republicans, and Nicole was frustrated by the narratives of the Capitol Police that were dominating the news: The force seemed to be represented by officers who struck her as Trump-hating radicals on the left, or else were portrayed as lax extremists who supported the rioters. She and her husband voted for Trump and still would again if he were the Republican nominee, but that did not mean they were not outraged — disgusted — by him and by the rioters. Even so, she believed that to focus on Trump would be to distract from the people who had most betrayed her husband: the Capitol Police leadership, who dared to send her husband into battle, as she put it, without so much as a helmet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/magazine/jan-6-capitol-police-officers.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
but does the BBB program include anything for "mental health?" I have to believe that this proves that there is a need for such support!
