I don't think they should have fired on the crowd, but I believe they would have if the situation was different. They should have deployed riot suppression measures like tear gas and rubber bullets, which may very well have dispersed the crowd (remember that one woman who fled in shock after getting maced?). They were set up to fail, for sure, but it's kinda telling that most of them did so little. And the crowd was mostly normal people who wouldn't have charged into gunfire, give me break.
I wonder how many times they dined out on "I protect the seat of government with my life!" before they finally got the chance to do so. That said, some of them did manage the evacuation surprisingly well given the circumstances. Things were almost SO much worse, and it wasn't some fluke.
And BS the takedowns were aggressive! Don't you remember the people being casually helped down the steps? Or allowed to protest well into the night, past the curfew, directly in front of lines of armed officers? They treated them with kids gloves! Some people who lingered *inside the building* were cuffed on the ground, but they were BY FAR the exception.
Aggressive takedowns is what killed and wounded so many nonviolent BLM protesters (and I don't mean the "associated" rioting, I mean nonviolent protesters). People slammed into the ground on national TV. That didn't happen here, I wonder why.