Thread by @egavactip

I put together some quick screen shots of this video as I was watching it, to give you a sense of what transpired.

"New January 6 video shows three hours of violent and chaotic assault on police"

cnn.com/2021/12/24/pol…

Rioters grab a Capitol Police (?) riot shield and pass it back towards the crowd--the second one they grabbed here. Riot shields would also be passed forward to use against the police.

The man in the front with the pole appears to be using it to strike an officer. The police are off-camera during the assault. The first ones you can see are Metro DC police--not sure if they were the original ones here or reinforcements.

This onlooker perched high in the right with the light-colored jacket is giving the fighters up front advice and encouragement.

People flying the thin blue line flag while violently attacking police--something that happened a lot on January 6--is one of the most pathetic and hypocritical features of that day.

At this point in time--I include the time in the screen capture so you can go to it--everybody up front is engaged in synchronized pushing against the police. Note that there are an endless number of rioters who can replace tired attackers.

Around 1:18 into the video, you can start to see Metro DC police entering the bottom of the video, pushing back against the rioters. They are trying to push them out of the tunnel.

Here Metro and Capitol police have mostly pushed people out of the tunnel. The tunnel is constricting, which protects the officers, esp. their flanks, from the huge crowd outside.

There's a period of relative quiet before the crowd gets violent again and one person leaps up to grab a handhold on the outside of the tunnel so he can launch full-body-swing kicks at the faces of police officers. Others reach in to strike with poles.

Some of them launch their bodies onto the tops of police riot shields being held in the air to protect the police from poles and projectiles.

Here two rioters have momentarily seized a shield from the police (it's the diagonal one in back, not the more prominent one closer to the front, still in the hands of police), but the police are able to regain control of it. Police eventually lose both shields to rioters.

As a military historian, I can't help but be reminded by Thermopylae.

Here you have a rioter, on the left side of the tunnel, and a police officer high up on the far right side of the tunnel, both spraying pepper (?) spray at each other.

Just moments later, rioters attack the police in the tunnel with a stepladder. Soon, though, liberal up-close use of pepper spray against the rioters helps the police and causes some of them to retreat. However, unlike the police, they have an endless number of replacements.

Around the 2:11 mark, rioters are once more starting to force their way into the tunnel (before this time, the camera view had been partially obscured by some thrown or sprayed substance).

Things quickly get really violent. Note the crutch being used as a weapon. The rioters also start spraying pepper spray or (more likely ) bear spray at the officers again.

Here a rioter has gotten into a corner of the tunnel where it is difficult to force him back out. Some time earlier, another man used this exact location to huddle from the violence with his hands over his head.

A couple of times the rioters get a little way into the tunnel, but the police are stacked deeply and it's hard for the rioters to get further in. However, as a certain number of rioters get into the tunnel, the body masses begin to equalize, making it more difficult for police.

You can tell by the position of the man on the left in the Trump cowboy hat that the police are once again pushed to the bottom of the video area (by 2:17). However, with effort, the police are eventually able to push most of the protesters out of the tunnel again.

I think it's around this time Officer Fanone is seized by the crowd, dragged down the steps and beaten unconscious. You don't get a clear view of that from this video, but you can see it from the outside here (note the crutches, shown above, thrown here): washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/…

At the 2:33 mark, the rioter assault on the tunnel is extremely violent. It lessens, slightly, then around 2:47 there's another assault on the tunnel.The police respond with batons and copious pepper spray.

The video ends at 3 hours, at which point police are still defending the tunnel entrance from attacking rioters.

I should warn people with epilepsy that the last 10 minutes or so of the video feature many strobe-light-like flashes that you may want to avoid.