Effectively making mass arrests, experts on policing say, would require officers to carry zip ties, set up staging areas, arrange transportation for detainees, and have a holding area to keep them while being processed. In other words, said David Harris, a professor specializing in policing at the University of Pittsburgh, precisely the kind of foresight and preparation the Capitol Police lacked that day.
“Everything tells me that if they'd had the numbers to make that many arrests, they would have been able to keep people out of the Capitol in the first place,” Harris said. The impact of that failure, he said, is potentially huge. “People will get away. Evidence will be destroyed. The damage was immediate, and it has only sunk deeper as time has gone on.“