I have tried to get this right again and again. It won’t come clean. All I have is this.
Over 150 police officers were injured in their defense of Congress. Those injuries do not include cases of PTSD. They do include head wounds, cracked ribs, smashed vertebra, concussions, eye damage from bear spray.
One example:
D.C police officer Michael Fanone “suffered a heart attack and concussion after being dragged down the Capitol steps by pro-Trump supporters, after being shocked with a stun gun, and beaten.”* He was tasered in the back of the neck. He was bear-sprayed multiple times.
“After Fanone regained consciousness that day, he and his partner, Jimmy Albright, stumbled away from the Capitol to their patrol car, weaving like drunks from the chemical agents they’d inhaled. At one point Albright fell to his knees and vomited uncontrollably. They kept walking, arms around each other’s shoulders.”**
If you are the son of a cop, it’s all personal. Every cop murdered, every cop who does something heinous, every cop who does something right. Every cop becomes in some form an avatar of your father. What would he have done?
Every cop in the phalanx in the tunnel. They all have his face. I know what he would have done.
*Bess Levin. “POLICE OFFICER SAVAGELY BEATEN DURING 1/6 ATTACK BLASTS TRUMP FOR REWRITING HISTORY”. Vanity Fair, April 28, 2021.
**Molly Ball. “What Mike Fanone Can’t Forget”. Time, August 5, 2021.
