The Officers Danced at a Black Lives Matter Rally. Then They Stormed the Capitol.

ROCKY MOUNT, Va. — One sunny day last spring, Bridgette Craighead was dancing the Electric Slide with three police officers in the grass next to the farmers’ market. It was the first Black Lives Matter protest this rural Virginia county had ever had, and Ms. Craighead, a 29-year-old hairdresser, had organized it.

She had not known what to expect. But when the officers arrived, they were friendly. They held her signs high, and stood next to her, smiling. Later an officer brought pizzas and McDonald’s Happy Meals. They even politely ignored her cousin’s expired license plate.

This, she thought, was the best of America. Police officers and Black Lives Matter activists laughing and dancing together. They were proving that, in some small way, their Southern county with its painful past was changing. They had gotten beyond the racist ways of older people. This made her feel proud. In a photograph from that day, Sgt. Thomas Robertson is smiling, and Ms. Craighead is standing behind him, her face tilted toward the sun and her fist held high.

She did not see the officers around Rocky Mount much after that. But in early January, someone sent her a photograph. It showed Officer Jacob Fracker and Sergeant Robertson posing inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the day the building was stormed by Donald J. Trump’s most fervent supporters.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/rocky-mount-capitol-riot-black-lives-matter.html