In Seattle, Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz confirmed at least two officers had been placed on administrative leave and referred to internal investigations after the department received social media posts showing the officers in Washington Wednesday.
“The Department fully supports all lawful expressions of First Amendment freedom of speech, but the violent mob and events that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol were unlawful and resulted in the death of another police officer,” Diaz said in a statement Thursday. He vowed to fire any officers who were “directly involved in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”
The two officers were not immediately identified.
In Texas, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in San Antonio was among the first to announce an internal investigation into one of its employees’ participation.
Roxanne Mathai, a Bexar County sheriff’s lieutenant, is facing an investigation after she posted a video on Facebook of herself at the Capitol draped in a Trump flag; she noted she was not going to enter the Capitol building like others.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said during a virtual news conference Thursday that his staff had forwarded the images of Mathai to the FBI.
Mathai referred questions to her attorney, Hector Cortes, who said he was confident the 46-year-old jail lieutenant would be cleared of wrongdoing because she was present at the rally but didn’t participate in any illegal activity.
“All her posts show that the closest she got to the Capitol was that she was on the lawn at the time the chaos was happening inside, unbeknownst to her,” Cortes told The Post.