Of all the things America’s uniformed law enforcement officers have had to deal with in the past five decades or more – in the most serious instances of civil unrest – the Capitol Hill protest of January 6th, 2021, was arguably one of the least traumatic, the least destructive, and the least dangerous. Why, then, would two Washington, DC, police officers take legal action to force Congress to erect a memorial to honor the men and women tasked with maintaining law and order and protecting the Capitol that day? The answer, of course, is politics.
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges and former US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn filed their lawsuit on June 12, claiming that the Architect of the Capitol should have installed the memorial – a plaque – as directed by a 2022 law signed by Joe Biden.
As reported by The Washington Times, the architect, Thomas Austin, testified before a House subcommittee that he had not been instructed by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) to install the plaque. As House Speaker, Johnson is responsible for green-lighting such modifications. The deadline for putting in the plaque, included in the law Biden signed, has passed.
January 6th Failings and Fables
It is true that some 140 police reportedly sustained some degree of injury during the massive January 6th event. A few of those injuries required hospitalization. But does that number mean the officers at this particular demonstration were somehow more heroic than the ones who have faced off with angry mobs at other times in other parts of the country?
Does anyone even know for sure that the 140 figure – originally coming from the police union and reported in Washington’s flagship establishment newspaper (not The Times) – is accurate or inflated? After all, the people saying this many police personnel were injured are the same people who claimed one officer died from the physical assault he suffered. That claim was later revealed to be entirely false.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, published in March 2022, noted that 114 officers said they were injured during the January 6th demonstration. The seriousness of most of the injuries remains unclear. What is clear is that if police officers were being rushed to local hospitals with smashed skulls and broken bones, the anti-Trump media would have been all over every one of those stories.
In the days and weeks that followed January 6th, how much media coverage was there of the physical toll on the law enforcement officers present that day? Almost none at all, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that very few injuries were serious. All the talk was of Officer Brian Sicknick, who supposedly died after being practically beaten to death by Trump supporters. In fact, Sicknick passed away in the hospital the following day after suffering two strokes. The medical examiner’s report noted that Sicknick had no internal or external injuries.
Given the lies that were peddled about what was the tragic passing of a police officer and the distortions concocted by the January 6th Select Committee, any information about that day presented as the “official” version of events should be viewed with at least a modicum of skepticism.
It certainly seems to be the case that many of the police officers deployed to the Capitol on January 6th did not feel adequately prepared to deal with the situation. That GAO report reveals that, of the 315 officers present at the scene, 153 acknowledged they did not feel at all prepared to use crowd control tactics. Others stated that they were not properly equipped, and many claimed they were unsure if they could use force, if necessary, without facing disciplinary action.
Someone failed those police officers, many of whom found themselves in a situation for which they clearly were neither sufficiently trained nor prepared. But still – a memorial plaque?
An Obvious Political Agenda
Dunn is very much an outspoken critic of the current president, to put it mildly. When President Trump pardoned the protestors, many of them detained for extended periods prior to trial in appalling conditions, Dunn said it was a “slap in the face” to the Capitol Police. Dunn pinned the blame for Ashli Babbitt’s death on Trump. Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran, was the only person who died on January 6th because of direct violence. She was shot at point-blank range by a Capitol Police officer.
Hodges campaigned for Kamala Harris and talks about January 6th the way Vietnam War veterans talk about the 1968 Tet Offensive. He, too, was outraged by the pardoning of J6 protesters. A failed congressional Democrat candidate, Hodges speculated during the 2024 campaign that Trump could be “more aggressive” in disputing the election than in 2020, if he lost to Kamala Harris.
The only people who want the January 6th protest immortalized in American history alongside Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are Trump’s most zealous foes. They want that day in 2021 to be remembered as the worst civil disruption in the history of this country – as the day Trump led his insurrectionists against Congress. That’s not what happened, of course, but truth has been the primary fatality in the left’s war on a single man.
Erecting any kind of memorial to January 6th in the nation’s capital would be a permanent celebration of political hostility. It would become, for congressional Democrats, a shrine to their supposed struggle to defend democracy – which, it seems likely, is exactly what they want.
