Authorities on Friday arrested a man accused of assaulting DC Metropolitan police officer Mike Fanone, who was allegedly beaten and trained by a mob of rioters during the assault on the Capitol. According to loading documents, Thomas Sibick ripped Fanone’s badge and radio from his uniform during the assault on the steps on the west side and then buried the badge in his backyard.
Prosecutors allege that Sibick, of Buffalo, New York, assaulted Fanone when he tore off the badge and the radio. The attack is said to have occurred while Fanone was beaten and beaten by a group of rioters who pulled him from the police line.
As a result of the violence, Officer Fanone lost consciousness and was subsequently hospitalized for his injuries, which likely included a concussion and injuries from the Taser, court documents said. Sibick is not charged with beating or tasking Fanone.
Sibick is charged with attacking or impeding law enforcement, impeding law enforcement, and forcibly depriving someone of anything of value, among other charges. A federal judge in the Western District of New York released him this afternoon over the government’s objection. The Justice Department has appealed that decision to DC federal court, where the case will continue to be pursued.
Fanone said he was standing with a few dozen other officers at a west entrance to the Capitol, facing a crowd of rioters trying to storm the building when someone grabbed him from the police line and dragged him into the crowd. only.
“It was cruel, just beaten, beaten with a variety of different objects,” Fanone said during a January interview with CBS News. He said he had been taged “probably half a dozen times.”
Prosecutors say Sibick initially denied being part of the mob that attacked the officer during an interview with FBI agents.
But when federal detectives confronted him with stills from Fanone’s body camera video, Sibick reportedly admitted to being part of the crowd – but claimed to have only grabbed the officer’s badge and radio in an attempt to pull him away from the crowd. Sibick is said to have told officers that after taking possession of the items, he put the radio and badge in a trash can on Constitution Avenue and did not return them to the police for fear of arrest.
Prosecutors say Sibick later recanted that statement to FBI agents, instead claiming that he disposed of the items in a hotel container on his return to Buffalo. After an agent emailed Sibick saying that authorities would review security footage of the hotel to confirm his claim, Sibick reportedly called the agents saying he was ‘distraught’ and ‘wanted to do the right thing’ , and admitted that he buried the officer. badge in his backyard. He reportedly clouded it and handed it over to the FBI, in a ziploc.
FBI
Fanone described his experience with the mafia to CBS News in January, saying that people started chanting, “Kill him with his own gun,” and that some in the crowd started reaching for his weapon.
In an interview with CBS affiliate WUSA9 in January, Fanone said he considered killing people – but thought if he did, “they would take the gun and kill me.”
He added that he thought his best chance of survival was “trying to appeal to someone’s humanity” and said he yelled at the crowd that he had children. He explained that some of the protesters eventually came to his rescue and surrounded him to help him get out of the crowd.
Fanone told WUSA9 that he had been in the hospital for a day and a half after the attack, and said he had a message from the group that helped him escape the crowd: “Thank you, but f ** k you there. are. ”
He also described the attack as a ‘coordinated effort’, saying, ‘I mean, they were almost counting the cadence while pushing against us’, referring to the military practice of chanting in a call-and-response pattern.
Before being pulled into the crowd and beaten, Fanone said he saw Officer Daniel Hodges bleeding and being crushed between a door and the mob as they shouted “swell-ho”.
Hodges told CBS News in January that a rioter ripped off his gas mask, hit his head on the door, took his stick and hit him on the head with it.
“I absolutely considered that it could be,” Hodges said. “Maybe I won’t get out.”
Authorities arrested Patrick Edward McCaughey III in January, claiming he used a police riot shield to pin Hodges to the door while Hodges cried out in pain. McCaughey was charged with crimes including assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon and civil disorder.
No one has yet been charged with the death of Officer Brian Sicknick, but a U.S. official told CBS News last month that the FBI was focusing on one man as a possible suspect.
Nearly 140 officers from the US Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police were injured in the riot, Capitol Police Labor Union Chairman Gus Papathanasiou said in a January statement to CBS8.
“I have officers who were not given helmets before the attack and who suffered brain injuries,” Papathanasiou said in the statement. “An officer has two cracked ribs and two broken discs. One officer will lose his eye and another has been stabbed with a metal stake. ‘