Authorities on Friday arrested a man accused of assaulting metropolitan capital policeman Mike Fanone, who was reportedly beaten and shot by a crowd of protesters during the attack on the United States Capitol. Prosecution documents say that Thomas Sibick ripped Fanone’s badge and radio off his uniform during the attack on the west front steps and subsequently buried the badge in his backyard.
Prosecutors allege that Sibick, from Buffalo, New York, assaulted Fanone when he took off his badge and radio. The attack was said to have occurred while Fanone was being beaten and fired by a group of protesters who took him off the police line.
As a result of the violence, policeman Fanone lost consciousness and was later hospitalized for his injuries, which probably included a concussion and injuries caused by the taser, court documents say. Sibick is not accused of beating or shocking Fanone.
Sibick is accused of assaulting or preventing law enforcement, obstructing law enforcement and taking anything of value by force by force, among other charges. A federal judge in the Western District of New York granted him freedom from house arrest because of the government’s objection this afternoon. The Justice Department appealed this decision to the DC federal court, where the case will be prosecuted again.
Fanone said he was stationed at the west entrance to the Capitol along with a few dozen other policemen, facing a crowd of protesters trying to break into the building, when someone grabbed him off the police line and dragged him into the crowd alone.
“It was brutal, just beaten, hit by a variety of different objects,” Fanone said during an interview in January for CBS News. He said he was electrocuted “probably about half a dozen times”.
Prosecutors say Sibick initially denied being part of the crowd that attacked the policeman during an interview with FBI agents.
But when federal investigators confronted him with still images from the camera video of Fanone’s body, Sibick allegedly admitted he was part of the crowd – but claimed to have just grabbed the officer’s badge and radio in an attempt to keep him out of the crowd. Sibick reportedly told agents that after taking possession of the items, he placed the radio and badge in a trash can on Constitution Avenue and did not return them to the police because he was afraid of being arrested.
Prosecutors say Sibick later retracted that statement to FBI agents, claiming that he instead disposed of the items in a hotel trash bin when he returned to Buffalo. After an agent sent an email to Sibick to say that the authorities would review the hotel’s security footage to confirm his complaint, Sibick allegedly called the agents saying he was “upset” and “wanted to do the right thing”, and he admitted that he had buried the distinctive policeman in his yard. He reportedly handed it over to the muddy FBI in a ziploc.
FBI
Describing his experience with the crowd for CBS News in January, Fanone said that people started shouting “Kill him with your own gun”, and that some in the crowd started to grab your gun.
In an interview with CBS affiliate WUSA9 in January, Fanone said he considered killing people – but thought that if he did, “they will take out the gun and kill me”.
He added that he thinks his best chance of survival is “trying to appeal to someone else’s humanity” and said he shouted at the crowd that had children. He explained that some of the protesters eventually came to his aid, surrounding him to help him leave the crowd.
Fanone told WUSA9 that he spent a day and a half in the hospital after the attack, and said he had a message for the group that helped him escape the crowd: “Thanks, but f ** k you for being there.”
He also described the attack as a “coordinated effort” and said, “I mean, they were almost counting the cadence while pushing us,” referring to the military practice of singing in a pattern of call and response.
Before being pulled into the crowd and beaten, Fanone said he saw policeman Daniel Hodges bleeding and being crushed between a door and the crowd as they shouted, “push him”.
Hodges told CBS News in January that a rowdy man tore off his gas mask, banged his head on the door, took his baton and hit him over the head with it.
“I definitely thought it could be,” said Hodges. “I may not be able to get out of there.”
Authorities arrested Patrick Edward McCaughey III in January, claiming that he used a police shock shield to arrest Hodges at the door while Hodges screamed in pain. McCaughey was charged with crimes, including assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon and civil disorder.
No one has yet been charged with the death of police officer Brian Sicknick, but a US official told CBS News last month that the FBI was focusing on one man as a possible suspect.
Nearly 140 US Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police officers were injured during the riot, Capitol Police Union president Gus Papathanasiou said in a January statement provided to CBS8.
“I have officers who did not receive helmets before the attack and who suffered brain injuries,” Papathanasiou said in the statement. “One policeman has two broken ribs and two broken spinal disks. One policeman is going to lose his eye and another was stabbed with a metal fence post.”