From left: Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, DC Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, DC Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges and U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn.Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Wiping away tears, Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell detailed how his family spent hours desperately attempting to contact him while watching the events unfold on the news.
It wasn’t until he spent hours being attacked both physically and verbally — even at one point offering CPR to one of the rioters — ‘that I finally had a chance to let my own family know that I was alive," Gonell testified.
As Gonell explained, he didn’t arrive home until 4 a.m. on Jan. 7. He was on his way back to the Capitol building, to head back to work, just four hours later.
Aquilino Gonell.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The stories from Gonnell’s colleagues were similarly striking.
Fanone explained how he was beaten and “electrocuted again and again and again” with a taser, while he could hear rioters yelling, “Get his gun and kill him with his own gun.”
“I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad,” Fanone said, adding, “I remained grateful that no member of Congress had to go through” what he did.
In an effort to appeal to the attackers’ consciences, Fanone said he told them he was a father with kids at home.
Michael Fanone.im Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images
“I said as loud as I could manage, ‘I’ve got kids,’ " he said. At that point, some of the rioters allowed him space and he was brought inside the building.
Daniel Hodges.Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges offered a similar story in his own testimony, explaining how the mob of pro-Trump rioters called he and his fellow officers “traitors,” and attempted to disarm him of his baton while shouting, “You will die on your knees.”
Sgt. Harry Dunn.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In his own testimony, Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn described the racist epithets he and other Black officers endured on Jan. 6.
Explaining how he told the pro-Trump rioters that he voted forJoe Biden(to dispute their claims that “no one” voted for Biden), Dunn said the mob’s rhetoric quickly grew racist: “One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, ‘You hear that guys: this n—– voted for Joe Biden!’ Then the crowd, perhaps around twenty people, joined in, screaming, ‘Boo! F—— N—–!’ "
Dunn continued: “No one had ever — ever — called me a n—– while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police office … One officer told me he had never, in his entire forty years of life, been called a n—– to his face, and that that streak ended on January 6.”
There were five deaths in connection with the Jan. 6 riots, during which a large group ofDonald Trumpsupporters stormed the U.S. Capitol complex as lawmakers gathered to certify Electoral College votes for President Biden.
Democrats and some Republicans have pushed for amore thorough investigationinto the security failures that allowed the pro-Trump mob to successfully storm the building — and to investigate what role the former president, 74, played in the deadly attack.
In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosiannounced plansto launch “an outside, independent 9/11-type Commission to investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex.”
Though ameasure that would establish an independent commissionpassed the House, Senate Republicansblocked a similar bipartisan effort. Some Republicans have even gone so far as to downplay the events entirely.
Gonell used his opening statement to question those who have failed to condemn the attacks (noting that many are the same people who expressed outrage at those who kneel during the National Anthem as a means of protest against police brutality): “There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled for social justice … Where are those same people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?”
Even more than six months later, the officers explained they and their families continue to feel the impacts from the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection.
“My children continue to deal with the trauma of nearly losing their dad that day,” Fanone continued. “What makes the struggle harder…is to know so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend are downplaying or outright denying what happened. I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room.”
Growing more emotional, Fanone raised his voice as he lambasted those who have tried to downplay the events of Jan. 6, saying: “The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful.”
Fanone continued: “Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day. And in doing so, betray their oath of office.”
source: people.com
