" John Catanzara, the president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge.
... (was) elected last May to represent the city’s 12,000 rank-and-file police officers, said he understands the frustration behind the riot, which led to four deaths, injuries to several police officers and damage to the iconic building.
“There was no arson, there was no burning of anything, there was no looting, there was very little destruction of property,” Catanzara told WBEZ in a Wednesday evening phone interview. “It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen, somehow, some way.” ... (but) “Evidence matters,” Catanzara said.
“Until that appears, shame on them for what they did, but it was out of frustration".
... Catanzara said Wednesday’s mayhem was “very different than what happened all across this country all summer long in Democratic-ran cities and nobody had a problem with that.”
The focus last summer, he said, was “blaming the police and the police’s response to the violence, looting and criminal behavior.”
“If the worst crime here is trespassing, so be it. But to call these people treasonous is beyond ridiculous and ignorant.”
... Catanzara was disciplined by the Chicago Police Department for posing in uniform in 2017 with a sign saying he supports his president.
The union’s national level endorsed Trump’s election bids in both 2016 and 2020.
... Catanzara also criticized the outgoing president for Wednesday’s mayhem: “I’ll be the first to say Trump deserves some responsibility for this.
He could have handled this whole situation quite differently, but that’s for him to answer, not me.”
“Obviously it has to fall on his doorstep for what kinda happened … no doubt about it,” he said."
... "This hyperbole and this emotion that the media is spewing now, like this is some kind of end-of-times scenario, is ridiculous.”
