General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsdemmiblue
(36,845 posts)May 12, 2021, was a balmy night, and dozens of newly vaccinated young urbanites mingled out on the patio. At 10 p.m., the cops asked the bartender to put CNN on the TV.
A true American hero, officer Michael Fanone, intoned the host, Don Lemon. This is difficult to watch. But it is the truth of what happened that day. The truthnot the lies that youve been hearing. The screen filled with Fanones body-camera footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection, airing publicly for the first time. Officer Fanone is outside on the Capitol steps on the lower west terrace, Lemon said. This is approximately 3:15 on that day.
Mike Fanonewiry, bearded, his arms and neck covered in tattoosnursed a Modelo at the bar and took it all in again. It had been four months since the day Fanone nearly died defending the Capitolthe day a self-described redneck cop who voted for Donald Trump was beaten unconscious by a mob waving Thin Blue Line flags and chanting U.S.A. The day Fanone, a narcotics officer with the D.C. metropolitan police department (MPD) whod planned to spend his evening shift buying heroin undercover, voluntarily rushed to defend the seat of American democracy and wound up in hand-to-hand combat with a horde hellbent on unstealing the election. The day Fanone was dragged down the Capitols marble stairs, beaten with pipes and poles, tear-gassed and stun-gunned. The day he pleaded for his life as they threatened to shoot him with his own gun, telling the rioters he had kids, until they relented and spared him.
On the TV at the bar, Fanones hand strained to push them away. The crush parted, and the full scene came into view: the grand terrace, the teeming crowd. Bodies upon bodies as far as the eye could see. Red hats and camo, Trump flags and American flags, all pressing forward, trying to break the cops tenuous hold on the central door into the building. There is a thin blue line between order and chaos, and at that moment, Mike Fanone was it.
The footage showed Fanone getting pulled out into the scrum. A mans voice: I got one! Then Fanone began to scream the high-pitched, undignified screams of a man being tased in the back of the neck.
The bar fell silent as the body-cam footage played. And suddenly, for the first time since that day, Fanone was sobbing uncontrollably, shoulders heaving as his buddies put their arms around him.
Fanone40, nearly broke, living with his mother, seeing ghosts, unable to return to duty in the only job hed ever loved, possibly foreverhad seen the footage a hundred times. But this was the first time hed viewed it with other people, watched them witness what he lived through, see it through his eyes, feel his aggression, his valor, his abject terror. He sat there crying for a good 20 minutes. At some point he looked up and realized he was surrounded: everyone in the bar had come inside from the patio and gathered around him, watching the footage on the screen.
https://time.com/6087577/michael-fanone-january-6-interview/
samsingh
(17,595 posts)Ocelot II
(115,681 posts)iluvtennis
(19,852 posts)AngryOldDem
(14,061 posts)2Gingersnaps
(1,000 posts)it does not matter one bit. He couldn't go back the next day, but a bunch of the rest of them had to. And then to be gaslit by the very people who served them to the horde, whose asses they had just saved. I imagine the sense of betrayal is only second to the fear he had for his life. Sickening.
mcar
(42,307 posts)It's long and quite powerful.
tishaLA
(14,176 posts)Sucha NastyWoman
(2,748 posts)Hiding in the shadows.
We need to recruit him to run for office in some purple state against someone who needs a good challenger.
KS Toronado
(17,213 posts)that when this issue hits the newsstands, reQublicans will have a book burning,
again proving they really don't back the Blue.
crickets
(25,964 posts)Long, but so worth reading. Fanone has been through a hell of a journey, in more ways than one. The country owes him and the other officers who were there that day a great debt. They saved us all.