A Maryland police officer has been convicted of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S.

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.

  • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    4 months ago

    I think ACAB is too simplistic. Lack of accountability attracts and nurtures evil, certainly. But the opportunity to be evil isn’t the only reason people become cops, and there’s certainly a long difference between the cop who’s just keeping their head down in a corrupt system and the one who’s relishing and thriving in it. If reform is to ever succeed, it will have to be by society supporting the cops who actually believe in just and honest policing, and mustering the political support to throw out/lock up the bad ones. Otherwise who’s going to do the locking up, a street mob?

    • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
      81·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        4 months ago

        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!)