Officers emotional in recounting Jan. 6 insurrection
WASHINGTON — Four Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department officers on Tuesday recounted their experience fighting off the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol during the first hearing of a new House committee investigating the attack.
“I recall thinking to myself, this is how I’m going to die, defending this entrance,” Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell said. “I could have lost my life that day, not once, but many times.”
Dressed in uniforms, the officers struggled at times to deliver the emotional testimony and graphic descriptions.
At one point during a video presentation, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone placed his hand on Gonell’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. Others dabbed their eyes with tissues, cleared their throats repeatedly and paused to drink water throughout their testimony.
Gonell said he was more scared on Jan. 6 than he was during his Army tour of duty in Iraq. He said when he arrived home at 4 a.m. on Jan. 7, he could not even hug his wife because his uniform was so soaked in chemical irritants he had been sprayed with.
Less than four hours later he was back at work. He faces multiple surgeries from injuries to his shoulder, legs and feet, and at least a year of rehabilitation.
Tuesday’s hearing, which was meant to set the tone for what is expected to be a monthslong investigation, focused primarily on the officers and what they experienced fighting off the melee for several hours. Some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have sought to downplay the event as a largely peaceful protest that got out of control.
“Even though there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including hours and hours of video and photographic coverage, there is a continuous and shocking attempt to ignore or try to destroy the truth of what truly happened that day and to whitewash the facts,” Gonell said.
Speaking for more than three hours, officers discussed seeing protesters carrying knives and metal batons, and breaking apart barricades to use the pieces as weapons. They recounted people in the
crowd trying to gouge out their eyes, calling them traitors and beating them with poles carrying American flags. They recalled watching officers keep fighting the rioters despite concussions and broken bones, being shocked with cattle prods and sprayed with wasp and bear spray.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said he received no warning of a threat from the chain of command when he took his post Jan. 6.
“We expected any demonstrators to be peaceful expressions of First Amendment freedoms, just like the scores of demonstrations we had observed for many years,” Dunn said.
Hours later, after hearing repeated racial slurs from the mob, Dunn, who is Black, recalled helping to perform CPR on one of the attackers, fighting to save her life in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office.
Before Jan. 6, “no one had ever called me a ‘n----’ while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” he said.
On Tuesday he pleaded with colleagues to get therapy and urged the panel to make sure help is available for struggling officers.
“More than six months later, Jan. 6 isn’t over for me,” he said.
The officers said they didn’t fire their weapons Jan. 6 because they were so outnumbered and thought it would cause armed people in the crowd to begin firing.
“If that turned into a firefight, we would have lost and this was a fight we couldn’t afford to lose,” Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges said. Video of Hodges screaming for help while wedged in a door between officers and rioters is one of the most widely seen videos from the attack.