Capitol Riot Body Cam Footage Shows What Police Faced

The camera picks up the sound of sirens and the low roar of a crowd in the distance.Police body camera footage shows officers from DC's Metropolitan Police Department arriving at the US Capitol on Jan. 6.The 52-minute video is one of a series of clips of police body camera footage that depict the frontline experience of officers who responded to the riots on Jan. 6 and were released over the past week. As they pass through the outer perimeter of the crowd, people call out to them, denouncing them as “traitors,” “pigs,” and “oath breakers.”They pass a man in a knit cap who holds up his hands and says, “Peaceful, man, this is peace.” Less than 30 seconds later, the officers engage in their first physical fight as they try to move people out of the way, clashing with a group that includes someone holding a skateboard, whom the government has identified as Grady Owens.The officers push through the crowd and arrive on the west side of the Capitol, where there is already a heavy police presence trying to stop the mob from moving closer. The vantage point of the video changes and the officer recording is on the ground, trying to push the man in the red jacket away from him.After the mob breaks through part of the police line, people stream onto other platforms in front of the Capitol that had been empty except for police. “Get out,” one man with his face fully covered, identified by the government as defendant Brian Mock, repeatedly screams at the officers.Police try to use riot shields to stop people from moving up farther onto the platforms in front of the Capitol, but it doesn’t always work, and some rioters — including Mock, according to prosecutors — shove them and knock officers to the ground.As the mob continues to successfully move closer to the west front of the building and occupy platforms on either side, officers climb a set of steps to a higher balcony. A bearded man in a camouflage jacket identified by the government as defendant Scott Fairlamb yells at a group of officers as they pass, “You have no idea what the fuck you’re doing.” There’s some physical altercation off camera — Fairlamb is charged with punching an officer in the head — and a man asks the officers if they’re OK.A woman in a yellow scarf addresses the officers as they go by: “We’re Americans and we’re doing this for you,” she says.More videos are expected to come out as the existing prosecutions unfold and new cases are filed.