Officer on Capitol riot: ‘Is this America? They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags’

A Capitol Police officer said in a new interview that supporters of former President Trump shouted racial slurs at him and beat fellow officers with Blue Lives Matter flags during the deadly rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, asking, “Is this America?” 

“I got called a [N-word] a couple dozen times … protecting this building,” Officer Harry Dunn told ABC News. “Is this America? They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags. They fought us, they had Confederate flags in the U.S. Capitol.”

Dunn said he entered the Capitol just as the mob stormed the complex, breaking windows, ransacking lawmakers’ offices and sending members of both chambers fleeing into hiding.

The 13-year veteran of the Capitol Police force also described a “cloud of smoke” in the Capitol Rotunda from fire extinguishers going off while discussing what he witnessed after the rioting.

“The floors are covered in white dust, water bottles, broken flagpoles, mask, empty canisters of pepper spray, helmets, Trump flags, everything in the Rotunda, just laying there on the floor,” he said. 

Dunn said the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were “terrorists,” adding that he believes there were racists among the crowd. 

“They tried to disrupt this country’s democracy — that was their goal. … And you know what? Y’all failed because later that night, they went on and they certified the election,” he said. 

“It wasn’t just a mob or a bunch of thugs, they were terrorists.”

One of the Capitol Police officers who stood their ground during the January 6th insurrection speaks out for the first time, exclusively with @PierreTABC: https://t.co/Y7J7I6SQF8 pic.twitter.com/rjnBDbHIVb

— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 22, 2021

Officer Brian Sicknick died as a result of an injury sustained during the insurrection, and Officer Eugene Goodman was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for leading rioters away from lawmakers during the incident. 

“There were dozens of Eugene Goodmans that day,” Dunn said of his colleagues on the force. “Eugene got caught on camera, and I’m not surprised that he did the right thing, the brave thing, the heroic thing — there were so many Eugene Goodmans that weren’t caught on camera that day … and I’m proud to work with all of them.”

The House indicted Trump on one article of impeachment over his role in the rioting, but the former president was later acquitted in the Senate.