Capitol Police officer suspended after anti-Semitic material found at work, officials say
A U.S. Capitol Police officer was suspended after anti-Semitic reading material was found near his workspace.
A spokesperson said in a statement to McClatchy News that the Capitol Police officer was suspended by acting Chief Yogananda Pittman on Monday and the incident is being investigated. The officer’s name hasn’t been released to the public.
“We take all allegations of inappropriate behavior seriously,” Pittman said. “Once this matter was brought to my attention, I immediately ordered the officer to be suspended until the Office of Professional Responsibility can thoroughly investigate.”
Zach Fisch, chief of staff to Rep. Mondaire Jones, a New York Democrat, provided The Washington Post with pictures that showed a printed copy of the Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic text, on a table in a Capitol office building.
The Anti-Defamation League describes the Protocols as a booklet that “has been heralded by anti-Semites as proof that Jews are plotting to take over the world” and “served to rationalize anti-Semitism and genocide in Hitler’s Germany.”
According to The Post, Fisch took the photos when he was leaving the Longworth Building when he saw the booklet in plain view at a security checkpoint. The pictures show “tattered and stained” pages with a date stamp suggesting it was printed in January 2019, the publication reported.
Fisch wrote in tweets Monday evening that the incident “is both a national security problem and a workplace safety problem.”
“Our office is full of people — Black, brown, Jewish, queer — who have good reason to fear white supremacists. If the USCP is all that stands between us and the mob we saw on Jan. 6, how can we feel safe?” Fisch wrote.
Anti-Semitic imagery and symbols of white supremacist groups were displayed during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Robert Keith Packer, 56, was photographed wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt at the Capitol attack and was later arrested in Virginia, officials said, according to NBC News. Auschwitz was the location of a Nazi concentration camp and where more than one million people were killed during the Holocaust.
A social media video during the riot also showed a man “harassing an Israeli journalist” who was reporting outside the Capitol, the Associated Press reported.
The Capitol siege wasn’t “a tipping point” for anti-Semitism but instead “the latest explicit example of how (it) is part of what animates the narratives of extremists in this country,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, according to the publication.
“People are going to have to ask themselves,” Segal added, ”were they clear enough in condemning the hatreds that coalesced on Jan. 6?”
This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 3:52 PM with the headline "Capitol Police officer suspended after anti-Semitic material found at work, officials say."