What's wrong with this photo? A man with a badge and a gun stopped a US Senator from entering a federal building. By Hal M. Brown

 

A photo was embedded in a RawStory article that damn near jumped off the screen of my laptop this morning. It was in the article "Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk could end government as we know it."

The man is shown blocking Senator Ed Markey, who is wearing an armband saying "Climate Action Campaign." Here's their website. Markey was attempting to enter the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters. The man is identified as a security officer. He is not a U.S. Capitol Police officer who would have the authority to restrain, detain, and arrest someone. 

Capitol police can be identified by their badges and insignia.

The expression on the security guard's face as he blocks Markey with outstretched arms suggests he is alarmed as he is shouting something. I wonder what it saying. 

We don't know who this man is. We can probably assume that he works for a private security company and that, because he is armed, it costs more to hire him than if he was unarmed. 

We don't know what his training was. We don't know if he was deputized in some way so he did have police powers.

We do know that he is carrying a gun and that he's preventing a U.S. senator from entering a public building where he has every right to be.  

Unless the man has police authority he has no legal right to lay his hands on anybody except to defend himself. Likewise, Senator Markey would have no legal right to push his way past this man making contact with him.

What would have happened if Markey tried to enter the building by deftly maneuvering past him without making physical contact? Would the security guard have tried to physically stop him. That would be an assault.

I suppose we can be relieved that it was only a pistol he is carrying. Some security guards carry assault rifles like those from this company.

Forget Musk and DOGE trying to save money, why not contract with security companies and spend millions to hire a small army of MAGA thugs with assault rifles and give them police powers. They could deploy them around all federal buildings to keep pesky Democratic members of Congress like Ed Markey and other citizens out.

Trump already has lots of men and women with guns who he can order to take action against people. They are government employees, whether they work ICE and other Homeland Security departments, the FBI, and of course the military. 

I don't think he is able to legally order the Capitol Police to do anything. 

The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories. It answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the legislative branchof the federal government of the United States.

It appears the the Capitol Police Department can't be controlled by Trump. This goes for every police department around the country. We see that many police departments are refusing to help ICE round up immigrants while others have said they will assist them. 

Trump is able to control men with guns who work for security companies to take action against people.

Trump can develop an armed force of people who can go well beyond the usual role that officers with guns have at home in a democratic society. It shouldn't be necessary to point out that this role includes protecting people from being harmed by violent criminals who also are sometimes armed.

When I see these people, from ICE agents to someone like this security officer, I think of the role of the police in a democracy as being to protect and to serve. I think of how this always means to protect and to serve the people, not the polticians. It is a motto you see on the police cars in many communities.

Who do these people with guns actually protect and serve? It isn't me. It isn't you.

Addendum:

The man stopping Democratic members of Congress from entering the Department of Education building wasn’t wearing a unform and, from what we can tell, wasn’t armed. At least there was no pistol visible on his hip. Note that Fox News calls it an ambush.

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I write this as someone who was an auxiliary police officer for 20 years who worked with dozens of officers who actually signed up to protect and serve the public. 

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For example I posted: “Do you call the person who wakes up in a hotel room and smells smoke, and then sees it coming in from under the door, and then touches the door handle and it's really hot, so they pull the fire alarm, an alarmist? This is what some people warning about Trump becoming a dictator are being called.” 

I also posted the following: