INPUTS FROM A CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER ON DUTY ON JAN. 6^th

 

                                 …Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, of the Capitol Police

 

Will America remain a democracy?

 

I don’t think most of us really understand what the Capitol Police went through in dealing with the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  We forget that these individuals were having to battle those that were seriously prepared to kill people such as the then Vice President, Mike Pence, for not going against certifying the 2020 election results.  They were also having to deal with thousands of a mob that was aroused to fight by a president that had refused to accept the results of a legal election.

One of those Capitol Police officers was Aquilino Gonell, a sergeant with the Capitol Police. The following views expressed here are his own:

As a Capitol Police officer, on April 1, I tweeted: “Tourists trying to get into the Capitol,” along with a picture of flag-waving rioters smashing their way inside a Capitol building. Then I added, “April fools.”

It was a bad joke, parodying one congressman’s ridiculous statement that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was “a normal tourist visit.”  But as a Capitol Police sergeant who was on the front lines that terrible day, I felt I’d earned the right to make it.

In fact, real tourists did come back on April 1.  After the Capitol being closed for two years during the pandemic, the Capitol Visitor Center has begun a gradual reopening. Although my job is still protecting the federal buildings and those who work there, now I can also, once again, greet people and help show them around.

The first week, when a few families and small groups were allowed in, I noticed an older woman staring as if she knew me. Suddenly, she approached with a big hug and said tearfully, “I’m so sorry for what you’ve been going through.” She had recognized my face from my appearance before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. She brought her relatives over to thank me.

Later, when I’d stopped to answer a work-related text near the speaker’s office, another visitor tried discreetly to take my picture. When I acted as if I’d caught her at something, she froze and apologized, saying she, too, had recognized me. “No, I’m just busting your chops,” I said and laughed.

I wound up posing for her, then volunteering to show her group some places beyond the Rotunda, the old Supreme Court chamber and other sites on the regular tour. I took them to the Capitol’s cornerstone, the Congressional Prayer Room and the chamber originally intended as George Washington’s tomb.  At the Lower West Terrace, near where the presidential inauguration platform had stood on Jan. 6, I took a deep breath and said, “This is the tunnel you guys probably saw on TV, where I almost died fighting the mob.”

They asked if I’d been scared. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t,” I admitted.

It was the first time I’d stood on that spot since Jan. 6 — since returning to work, I’d used other entrances and exits just to avoid reliving what happened.  Now I could almost hear the angry chants — Stop the steal! Fight for Trump!  U.S.A., as well as the screams of an injured fellow officer.

In response to the group’s questions, I repeated some of the account I’d given to the House committee: How we were beaten, pulled, punched and blinded with eye-damaging lasers by savages wielding hammers, knives, batons, baseball bats, a flagpole, and pepper and bear spray. How I was crushed in the tunnel, hands bleeding and barely able to breathe — worse than anything I’d experienced during my military service in Iraq — and I thought: “This is how I’m going to die, trampled while defending this entrance.”  I even showed the visitors where I’d undergone shoulder and foot surgeries because of that day’s injuries.

Remembering is hard… I still suffer flashbacks. But it’s also good to talk to people, to feel that ordinary Americans understand and care about what we did. It helps counter my disappointment in members of Congress who have falsely claimed that “there was no insurrection,” calling the rioters “peaceful patriots.” Those members are the people I risked everything to defend.

And while all the visitors I’ve talked to seem respectful, I can’t help but wonder if any of them were part of the insurrection. Could they be coming back to relive their big moment and gloat over the chaos they caused? Do they look at me and think: That’s the Latino officer I shoved? I remain vigilant, keeping an eye out for anyone who seems to be bragging to their friends.

Some aspects of security have been tightened for the reopening. We no longer take walk-ins, for example; visitors have to make reservations through the visitors’ center or the offices of their representative or senator, and the size of some tour groups is limited. As before, visitors must submit to security screening, going through a metal detector and having their bags searched or X-rayed.

Still, it’s hard not to be paranoid. I never thought such an attack would happen. Now I’m afraid it could happen again.

I don’t think that most of us can really understand what these individuals went through on that horrific day.  These officers were having to defend a number of individuals that were initially scared for their lives, but many Republican politicians that later tried to say that “there was no insurrection”. 

And many of those that now support the idea that the “election was stolen,” and they plan on supporting the former president to run again in 2024.  All this proves, is just how fragile our over 200 year democracy is today.  To think that perhaps 30% of the legal voters in the U.S. actually support the idea of having an authoritarian leader, over an elected one, just boggles my mind.  But I guess when some people will believe the rumors they obtain from their social media outlets, or they are devotees of the Fox News network, I guess today, it’s to be expected.

In any case, it is true that if the GOP does take over the congress in the 2022 election, we are all in for some serious efforts against any good things that have occurred from our currently, one functioning political party. 

A democracy cannot survive with only one functional political party.  It takes at least two or more parties of different ideas, to allow a democracy to function as it should.  The voters need to decide which party they want to run the country.  That’s how it’s supposed to work.  But since the election of the former president, his administration definitely showed us how NOT to run the country.  If it had been running as it should have been, there would not be so many Americans that are today being accused of doing things against the law, or against the norms of regular business and politics.

As Americans, we are entering a way of life that most of us did not ever expect to occur in this country.  We have taken our very fragile democracy for granted over the years, and we are entering a new approach that we almost lost during the Civil War era.  We were successful then, but will we be successful going forward?

Only time will tell.

Copyright G. Ater 2022