Invisible Insurrectionists

 

Where are the mug shots? Where are the photos chosen to show the accused in a bad light?

I’m talking about Andrew Ryan Bennett, the Columbia resident who pled guilty to his actions in attacking the Capitol along with a mob of like-minded insurrectionists. First of all, how on earth do we have people in Columbia* who would do such a thing? I do tend to think of us as a hotbed of acceptance and open-mindedness, but that is clearly wishful thinking.

I do think it’s odd that we have not seen the typical “defendant in a sketchy pose suggesting guilt” photographs that we usually see in cases where the accused is not white. Mr. Bennett, of course, is white. The public has been given a screenshot from a video taken the day of the attack but that’s it. 

Now these investigations are being done by the FBI so perhaps that makes a difference. I don’t know. But I do know how often we are subjected to mug shots of Black and Brown people who have been accused of a crime and photos taken from their social media accounts which depict them in the worst possible way. It feels to me almost as though the prosecution of the January 6th insurrectionists is being done in such as way as to have as little impact on their public reputations as possible. 

Is it because they are white?

Where are the news articles delving into this man’s past, outlining his activities and asking, “where did he go wrong?” We see them all the time when the defendant is Black. A white man who enthusiastically participated in mob activity to take down the United States Government will have received so little public coverage that he will be able to slip back into ordinary existence in lovely Columbia, Maryland. He may have pled guilty to a misdemeanor but what he and others were there to do was far from misdemeanor material. 

And Mr. Bennett was there cheering it all on. 

Where are the mug shots? 

* Yes, I dug around on Facebook to see if I could find this particular person. I am neither a qualified investigator nor a journalist and so anything I found at this point would be tantamount to irresponsible gossip. So I’m not going to go there.