WASHINGTON — Five DC Police officers testified Tuesday about the extreme violence they faced at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, including during an hours-long assault by rioters inside the Lower West Terrace Tunnel.
All five officers said they began the day elsewhere, including some on assigned to CDUs (civil disturbance units), but responded to the Capitol after a radio call for assistance was put out by DC Police Commander Ramey Kyle as supporters of former President Donald Trump began to attack and then overwhelm police at the building. When they arrived, the officers said, they encountered a “hostile” and “extremely violent” crowd that attempted to stop them from getting to the front lines and, in several cases, either attempted to or successfully robbed them of pieces of their riot gear, including batons and radios.
DC Police Officer Chad Curtice said of the 32 members of his squad who responded to the Capitol, only four made it through the crowd together to the police line. Once there, Curtice’s bodyworn camera showed rioters provoking, insulting and threatening police.
“Do you know what happens to traitors?” one rioter – identified in court filings as then-25-year-old Tristan Chandler Stevens, of Pensacola, Florida – yelled. “They get tied to a post and shot. Are you ready for that?”
Another rioter could be heard in bodyworn camera footage yelling, “Take off your weapons. Take off your badges. Take off your helmets and show solidarity with We the People or we’re going to run over you!”
As the situation at the Capitol degraded, at least four of the officers eventually made their way to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel just above the Inaugural Stage on the west side of the Capitol. The tunnel was the site of some of the most prolonged and violent assaults on police. The officers’ testimony Tuesday came as part of a bench trial for three defendants – Patrick McCaughey III, David Mehaffie and Stevens – indicted on multiple counts in connection with tunnel assault.
DC Police Officer Abdulkadir Abdi said when he arrived he heard Kyle, who had taken up command of the tunnel defense, preparing officers for “old-school CDU.”
“It’s going to be hand-to-hand combat,” Abdi said he understand that to mean. “Basically, get ready for battle.”
Abdi and other officers, including DC Police Sgt. George Donigian, Sgt. William Bogner and Officer Daniel Hodges, wound up on the front line of police’s barricade at a security checkpoint inside the tunnel. Video from Bogner’s bodyworn camera showed rioters breaking through the glass of a door and then charging toward police. In the video, Mehaffie – a 63-year-old Ohio resident who was charged in the 90s with blocking abortion clinic entrances (although that case ended in a mistrial) – can be seen among the mob’s front line. Donigian testified he believed he saw Mehaffie check a black item in his hand, which he thought might have been the glassbreaker on a pocketknife, before pounding the door. Another rioter eventually broke through the glass.
Mehaffie’s attorney William Shipley, a former U.S. attorney who now operates a private practice in Hawaii, asked Bogner about footage appearing to show his client at one point with his hands in the air, suggesting he was trying to tell the crowd to “stop.” Bogner testified that he couldn’t tell what Mehaffie, who could also be seen at the front of the crowd after control of the tunnel had been reasserted in other bodyworn camera, was doing or intending to do. Shipley has argued in filings that there’s no evidence of Mehaffie committing assault on Jan. 6, although under the statute with which he was charged, prosecutors need only prove he aided and abetted an assault.
Defense attorneys, with Shipley taking the lead for most of the day, also attempted to raise doubt about whether police were being repeatedly forced back by the crowd or whether they pulled back of their own volition. Inside the tunnel, Shipley asserted, police had room to retreat if they felt officers on the front lines were in mortal danger – an assertion Bogner disputed.
“Did you think this was the last stand?” assistant U.S. attorney Kimberly Paschall asked the sergeant on redirect.
“We had the mindset that we were not allowing them into the Capitol,” Bogner said.
Crushed by the Mob
Though five officers testified Tuesday, the most time was spent on DC Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was crushed against a doorframe by rioters while on the front lines in the tunnel.
A judge ordered video released last June showing Hodges screaming for help as he was pinned by a rioter using a stolen police shield. In the video, Hodges can be seen struggling as another rioter rips off his gas mask and steals his baton before striking him with it – leaving a wound on his head for which he later had an MRI. Investigators eventually identified Patrick McCaughey III, of Connecticut, as the man holding the shield that kept Hodges trapped in place.
Hodges said the pain from being pinned by the full force of the mob as they yelled “heave, ho!” was extreme enough that he worried he would black out.
“If I was there much longer being assaulted in such a way I knew it would make it difficult to maintain consciousness and I would become a liability,” he said.
Hodges, who’s been on the DC Police Department for more than seven years, described like the other officers how unlike other protests Jan. 6 was in his experience. When typical First Amendment events become violent, he said, the violence is “directionless… it’s almost anarchy.” But on Jan. 6, he said the crowd was of “one mind” working toward a single goal: trying to get inside the Capitol.
McCaughey’s attorney Lindy Urso questioned Hodges repeatedly on how a shield, which he described as a defensive instrument, could have caused the pain he described. In the video, McCaughey can be heard repeatedly telling police, including Hodges, to, “Just go home!” But the video also shows McCaughey, after noticing Hodges’ injury, appearing to try to get other officers’ attention to get him help. At one moment, McCaughey can be seen pointing to Hodges and yelling, “He’s hurt! Let him back.” Moments later, though, McCaughey can be seen picking up a fallen riot shield and using it to strike toward Hodges, who is still on the front line, and other officers attempting to help him get away.
Hodges told Urso, in response to the defense attorney’s question, that it did make sense to him that McCaughey would try to get him help after assisting in injuring him because that would remove an officer from the front lines. He also said he believed the mob was trying to recruit him to their side – something he told the January 6th Committee last year when he and three other officers testified.
In response to the notion that McCaughey sought to help Hodges, on redirect, assistant U.S. attorney Paschall played video showing McCaughey had pressed the stolen riot shield against Hodges for more than two minutes continuously – most of the time while he was being crushed against the doorframe.
The third day of testimony in McCaughey’s, Stevens’ and Mehaffie’s trial was scheduled to resume Wednesday morning. Three of their co-defendants were convicted last week of assault and obstruction following brief stipulated bench trials before U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was also presiding over their trial. Three other co-defendants were scheduled to begin trial on similar charges in April.
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