By Annie Bryan, Jessica Griffin and Heather Khalifa Published January 9, 2021 Insurrectionists try to break down a door of the U.S. Capitol Building shortly before 4 p.m. on Jan. 6 as Congress was meeting to certify the results of the presidential election. They disrupted the proceedings for about six hours, but ultimately failed in their mission as Joe Biden’s victory was certified at 3:39 a.m. on Jan. 7
JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
On Jan. 6, 2021, Inquirer photojournalists traveled to Washington, D.C., to document what they thought would be a significant but contained protest in Washington.
Instead, they witnessed and captured a historic moment more extreme than they predicted: A deadly insurrection inside the U.S. Capitol.
Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey couldn’t stand the thought of burying another one of his own.
It was March, and he had long been thinking of retirement, ever since Mayor Nutter had won reelection. Even then, he had been “95 percent sure.” His career was at an apex – there had been presidential appointments, and prominent positions on national policing boards, and an unprecedented drop in homicides in a city once dubbed “Killadelphia.”
When 2015 ended, there had been 280 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, an unfortunate jump from 248 the previous year, but overall he presided over a sharp drop in murder. In 2007, the year before he became Commissioner, there were 391 bodies laying in the city streets. In Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) and the new Commissioner’s first year, homicides dropped to 331, and then to 302 the following year. 2013 saw 246 homicides, the lowest number since 1967.