D.C. Police face down domestic terrorists
By Jeffrey Anderson
_____________________________________________
Viral clips of D.C. Police holding back a rabid hoard of white supremacists in the west facing tunnel on the lower level of the United State Capitol last week are horrific.
The extended version—at 29 minutes and 22 seconds—is up-close and hellish; a harrowing, claustrophobic portrait of American determination versus American rage.
Rioters arrived at the Capitol shortly before 1 pm. Before long, they forced their way in.
Over the next several hours, the world watched the mayhem in utter disbelief.
Down below, police in black riot gear clashed with a gang of insurrectionists at the glass doors inside the tunnel.
They were outnumbered.
The mob was formidable, at times manipulative. Even when beaten back, extremists surged forth again with resistance, as if storming the Bastille.
Down in the tunnel, white neon strobe lights, a whining security alarm and the haze of chemical irritants are dizzying, even through a computer screen. The shouts, chants and groans of pain are deafening.
Out on the Capitol grounds it is a sea of red MAGA caps, camouflage regalia and American and Confederate flags.
“U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
The sick assault was virtually unprecedented. It forestalled certification of the Electoral College’s votes and left five dead—including a U.S. Capitol Police officer—and close to 60 D.C. Police officers injured and traumatized.
So-called patriots carrying crude weapons descended on the Capitol near noon. D.C. Police officers deployed shortly after 1 pm, according to recently installed Chief of Police of the Metropolitan Police Department, Robert Contee III.
Two hours later, according to the time stamp on the video obtained by District Dig, a middle-aged man in a gray hoodie hoists himself up on a ledge just outside the tunnel. “Hey guys, listen up,” he shouts, “if you go further you are [smashing] people; stop here, then we’ll switch out.”
Projectiles launch from the rear. “Nah, don’t throw shit, don’t hurt them.”
“Let’s go!” shouts a rioter. The crowd surges forward.
Individuals shuttle to the front and back out, one at a time, coughing and blinking from chemical irritants.
A broad-faced man is smeared with an orange substance; his ally hands him a mesh trucker cap and he wipes his face with it—only for an instant.
“Man down!” comes an alert from within the scrum.
“Let us in, Let us in,” the mob shouts in unison.
“Spread out, spread out, let this man out…oh shit we got a man down.”
“We need people,” someone hollers.
“Keep your hands up and push. Don’t hit ‘em, don’t hurt ‘em.”
“Our house, our house…”
“Stop here then switch out,” the man in the gray hoodie says. “Push, push. Don’t throw shit, don’t hurt ‘em.”
“Let’s go, take it out,” instructs another, as the group hoists up a clear plastic shield bearing a Capitol Police logo and passes it over heads to the rear.
A guy with a mad-bomber fur hat comes stumbling out from the front, his face red and his eyes closed.
“U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
“[Inaudible] like the rats you are. Run motherfuckers.”
Another clear shield appears from the rear and is passed back up to the front. “Use the shield, use the shield, use the shield,” someone shouts.
Despite the violent chaos, there are moments of humanity. An officer looks out over the crowd and gestures down towards his feet. “Stop, you’re hurting her,” he says, pointing down at a young woman who is out of view.
Rioters stagger out from inside the tunnel, temporarily blinded, as police use their batons to violently jab and club those at the front.
One man dons an industrial respirator mask and a black plastic tricorn hat that is as creepy as it is cartoonish. Another sports a see-through orange hardhat.
“This is our house!” someone yells.
“Get back, get back,” a body-armor coated officer commands.
“Fuck you!”
“Back off!” an officer orders.
“Let us in. You work for us!”
The crowd surges past the outer doors and into the entryway between a second set of glass doors; another shield gets passed up to the front.
Strobes from inside the building back-light the police and reflect off their black helmets.
“This is our fucking country,” shouts a rioter, as the police gain traction and surge forward.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” a woman shrieks.
From somewhere a voice calls out, “We need fresh patriots in the front!”
A bearded young man comes reeling out of the mass of bodies and lets out a roar. “What are the fuck are we doing! I can’t even see! Let’s fucking go!”
“Open up, open up, open up…We need fresh people.”
“Alright, get ready to push, come on!”
It is still just 11 minutes and 39 nine seconds into the video.
“Let us in, let us in, let us in…”
“Fuck ‘em up!”
“We need new soldiers to the front!”
“Push!”
Just then, the police are met with some sort of chemical spray. The man in the tricorn hat is in the middle of the scrum, his hat firm on his head.
One man staggers out of the crush. “I’m out.”
“One out, let him go!”
“Here it comes,” another warns, as police retaliate with their own chemical spray, splattering the video camera lens.
“Traitor! Fucking bitch!”
A struggle over shields comes to a head. “Take their goddamn shields,” someone shouts, as the police push forward and deliver more baton blows.
“Fucking pussy bastards!”
Near the 14 minute mark, a lone Black D.C. officer emerges at the front of the police line and gets into a struggle with someone trying to take away his shield. He holds on and fights back with his baton. He is winded.
For a brief moment there is a pause, the insurgents coming eye to the shielded eyes of the police.
Then it’s back on.
“Traitors, traitors, traitors…”
“Make a shield wall! We gotta make a shield wall…shield wall, shield wall, shield wall,” someone chants. “Let the shield in front y’all,” a young woman urges.
“Shield wall! Shield wall! Shield wall!”
“Let us through!”
“Freedom, freedom, freedom,” someone out of view blares, his voice hoarse and strained.
Both sides are crushed up against the first set of doors, now partially closed. “Motherfuckers let us through!”
“Push! Push! Push!”
A woman in a red, white and yellow “Washington” ski cap tells a fellow rioter, “I’m ok, I’m ok. I’m pushing.”
Pinned against the tunnel wall and the back of the front set of doors, an officer’s bleeding knuckles have smeared his shield.
“We’re making progress!”
“Pussy!”
At the 19-minute mark the police advance a little further.
A dark-haired man with broad shoulders, black-rimmed glasses and a rust-colored hoodie starts to engage with an officer at the front.
“Just go home dude. C’mon, man, go home. Pick the right side. Go home, man.”
He sticks his face right in front of the officer’s plastic shield. “C’mon, you see me. Just go home. Don’t use that stick on me, boy. Talk to your buddy and go home. I’m not hurting you.”
The sounds of shields clashing and batons striking hard plastic drown out his entreaties.
The now-familiar image of the D.C. officer who had his respirator ripped off and then got crushed between the bodies and the doors becomes a closeup. He screams in agony, his lower lip swollen and red.
“Ahhhh!” he groans. “Owww. Ahhh. Ahh.”
The man in the rust-colored hoodie pulls the flip-up visor of the officer’s helmet down so his face is protected; he motions to another officer: “Hey you, he’s hurt.” He holds his arm out horizontally, elbow bent, palm up, as if he’s giving a military signal for the officer to come forward or join him. “He’s hurt,” the man says, getting an officer’s attention. “Let him back.”
At about 23 minutes the two sides pause again. A man with a respirator mask attached to a hood moves toward the front. “Stop, stop, stop,” he pleads to an officer. “We’re with you guys. Do the right thing. You need to arrest those traitors,” he says, motioning to the Capitol’s occupants. “You know this. We don’t wanna hurt you guys.”
“Are you okay? he asks the Black officer, who looks dazed and is heaving with exhaustion. “Catch your breath.”
The two sides get back to fighting.
“Let me out,” one man begs.
“Back off, let him out; back off, let him out; back off, let him out,” a man replies.
“Heave! Push!” goes the crowd. “Let him out! Back up! Keep pushing!”
Their push is in vain. The police inch their way forward until they are able to force the mob out through the front doors and into the daylight.
The man in the gray hoodie who had been commanding the rotation of bodies is down from the ledge where he has been monitoring the scene. He has removed his sweatshirt.
Once the hoard has been thwarted, he turns away from the tunnel, raises his arms and instructs rioters to “sit down.”
The assault on the main part of the Capitol has been going on for close to three hours. The surreal occupation has spread to different floors and offices, as thousands swarm the exterior grounds, walls and staircases, waving flags and raising a cacophony.
It is still more than an hour until D.C. National Guard troops will arrive. They will not declare the Capitol secure until 8 pm, according to a Pentagon timeline.
The next several days are filled with anger and disbelief—a city and a nation grieving over this treasonous uprising.
On Saturday, the sky is clear blue and sunny. The air is crisp. A quiet anxiety looms, as locals and visitors wander by the Capitol to find eight-foot black security fencing all around the grounds.
A Black man kneels alone on the curb and prays out loud, as National Guard troops look out from the other side the fence.
Near the Botanical Gardens a small group of D.C. cops are gathered. A local reporter approaches and offers one of them his gratitude and support. “You guys held that tunnel.”
“Yes, we did.”
