Editor’s Note: Michael Fanone, a former Washington, DC police officer injured during the Capitol riot, will publish a memoir next month, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” He is a CNN law enforcement analyst. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
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Update: On Tuesday, September 27th, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Kyle Young to 86 months in prison.
On Tuesday, a federal judge will sentence the first of four men accused of viciously assaulting me and other police officers as we defended the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
I’ll be there to look him in the eye and to seek justice.
Kyle Young of Redfield, Iowa, is the man who prosecutors say supplied the Taser that another Trump supporter used to electrocute me after I was violently dragged from the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace Tunnel. The defendant has pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting a police officer.
Young, who was there in the middle of the mob just outside the tunnel, restrained me as I recoiled from the first Taser shocks. On my body-worn police camera footage, Young’s menacing face and arms lunge toward me as I howl in pain. Like the three Taser scars on my neck, his face is a memory I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
Since the day of the insurrection, I’ve thought a lot about what justice looks like. Tuesday’s hearing won’t be the first time I’ve stood in court to face a criminal who attacked me. As an officer for the Metropolitan Police Department for two decades, I patrolled some of the most dangerous streets in Washington, DC. I participated in more than 2,000 arrests, mostly for dealing heroin, crack cocaine or methamphetamine or for illegally carrying guns.
I was assaulted scores of times while making an arrest, received at least five concussions and endured countless trips to the emergency room. It was simply part of the job. I knew that most people who violently resisted arrest weren’t targeting me. Most were just trying to escape. I get that. Nobody wants to be arrested. Going to jail sucks.
This case is different. We mustn’t let this moment pass without emphasizing why.
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