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After an FBI and Houston Police Department investigation determined that veteran agent Tam Pham was involved in the deadly breach at the U.S. Capitol this month, his departure from the department was swift.
He was put on administrative leave and resigned, without repression from the group that would usually litigate on behalf of an officer accused of wrongdoing.
The Houston Police Officers Union has fiercely defended its officers, even in cases that question the conduct of officers – including last year when officers shot and killed a man with a history of mental health issues who was on his knees.
The then union president called the sacking of four leaders in September “unfair and deplorable” and said the organization would represent them at their arbitration hearings.
The union’s response has been markedly different in the case of Pham, who faces two federal tort charges related to entering the Capitol.
Anyone who violated the Capitol “should be charged and receive the punishment assigned to them,” said Douglas Griffith, who is now president of the union. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a policeman or not.”
Pham has yet to enter a plea. His lawyer said Pham “is deeply saddened to be associated with the national terrorists who attacked our Capitol” and “strongly believes in the rule of law”.
Griffith said what separates what Pham is accused of from the charges other officers have faced in unrelated incidents is that the Capitol riot “was an attack on our democracy” which led to the death of an officer and others seriously injured. Five people, including a Capitol Hill police officer, died in events related to the attack.
“As an officer, I would expect that if I saw any officers being attacked, I would intervene between them,” Griffith said in an interview. “I would not participate in this kind of activity.”
Police departments in New York, Seattle and Virginia are investigating whether their officers participated in the pro-Trump riot. In doing so, police unions are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to defend the officers who participated.
In Chicago, for example, the union president first defended the crowd before stepping back. And in Seattle, the union leader is under administrative investigation after falsely claiming Black Lives Matter was responsible.
Kalfani Ture, a former Georgia police officer who is an assistant professor of criminal justice and policing at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, said the growing number of officers on leave suspected of taking part in the riot creates a paradox interesting for the police unions, which have largely protected bad cops from liability.
“When you see an officer lose his life, when you see other injured policemen, when you see these characters attacking other policemen, how do you justify that?” Ture asked.
Ture said the police unions were separating from theirs because of the death of the Capitol police officer and injuries sustained by dozens of other officers.
“If it weren’t for the optics, if it weren’t for the loss of human lives, if it weren’t for 50 police officers, both Capitol police and Metropolitan police, injured – seriously injured – insofar as it removed them from their posts, if it wasn’t for all of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the various police unions “said:” No one was really hurt. It was just an exercise of their First Amendment rights that basically got out of hand. “
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John Catanzara, chairman of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge, first defended the crowd that stormed the Capitol at the behest of President Donald Trump.
“There was no arson. There was no arson. There was no looting. There was very little destruction of property,” Catanzara told WBEZ, Chicago’s main public radio station, in an interview on the evening of January 6. a bunch of pissed off people who feel that an election has been stolen, one way or another. “
Photos and video of the incident show rioters overwhelmed police, smashed windows on the Capitol, knocked over tables and ransacked offices. A 19th century marble bust of President Zachary Taylor has been altered with what appeared to be blood. Residues of pepper spray, tear gas and fire extinguishers – deployed by both rioters and law enforcement officials – were also evident in the sequel.
Catanzara, a staunch supporter of Trump, told WBEZ he believed, as Trump has falsely claimed on several occasions, that the election was stolen, but admitted there was no evidence. Catanzara said what the rioters did was “very different from what has been happening across the country all summer in Democratic-run cities, and no one has had a problem with that.”
After the news of the death of a Capitol Police officer, Catanzara apologized, saying he had “shown an error in judgment” in the WBEZ interview.
“I would certainly never justify any attack on citizens, democracy or law enforcement,” he wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.
He didn’t mention the officer’s death, but said he was sorry and that “after seeing more videos and all the aftermath my comments would have been different.” Catanzara, who faces calls to resign, declined an interview request, but told NBC News on Thursday that he did not plan to quit.
His comments drew sharp criticism from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Patrick Yoes, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who said Catanzara’s remarks did not represent the views of its 356,000 members.
“There is no doubt that in addition to the tragic loss of life, these criminals have left a wide swath of damage in the building that is the heart of our democracy and have threatened our elected officials, congressional staff as well as our brother and our sister. Yoes said in a strongly worded statement that mentioned Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after being struck on the head by a rioter wielding a fire extinguisher.
“The National FOP rejects this serious misstatement and sees the incident for what it was – a violent mob of looters and vandals, visiting fear and destruction on one of our nation’s most sacred spaces.” , wrote Yoes.
Officer Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, faces growing calls for his resignation union and police after falsely suggesting that Black Lives Matter activists played a role in the violence on Capitol Hill. At least five Seattle police officers are under investigation for possible involvement.
Mayor Jenny Durkan and former police chief Carmen Best have asked Solan to back down and apologize or resign. Solan did not respond to requests for comment.
The Seattle Police Accountability Office is investigating Solan’s tweets, including one on January 8. saying “The far right and the far left are responsible for this sad day”, to determine whether they violated the policy of the ministry.
The New York Police Charity Association decried the riot as a “despicable attack”, in which an unidentified officer allegedly participated.
Jack Glaser, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said pro-Trump rioters “have undermined or really laid bare the reality of most of these groups, which is not really about law and order but much more on racial hygiene. “
The union, which represents about 24,000 rank and file officers, approved Trump’s re-election last year. The union did not return several requests for comment.
Glaser said he suspected that the “violation of basic democratic principles by the rioters was enough to make unions feel they could not support this.”
“I think what we’re seeing here is violence from the rioters, insurgents, on behalf of the thin blue line – some of them wearing the American flag modified with the blue lines – I think that it was offensive to professional law enforcement and to what had been seen as an alliance of support, “Glaser said.” It really stripped the pretension of those symbols. “
Ture agreed, citing the “deeply big” contradiction between expressed support for law enforcement and actions on Capitol Hill.
He added that unions defending the officers involved in the attack would find it difficult to separate themselves from images of people carrying Confederate flags and other racist badges associated with white supremacists.
“If you had taken part in this campaign,” he said, referring to the attack, “you cannot easily dissociate yourself from this type of sectarian prejudice, this perverse terrorism”.
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