U.S. Capitol Police officers were awarded Defenders of Democracy awards by Center for Politics officials in September.
Officers Harry A. Dunn, Caroline Edwards, Eugene Goodman, Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell received awards. Three other officers were awarded posthumously: Howard Liebengood, Jeffrey Smith and Brian Sicknick.
Liebengood and Smith died by suicide within weeks of the invasion of the Capitol. Sicknick died in the line of duty.
“We thought, ‘How often do you get them in one place?’ And they were all available, so we figured ‘Let’s get those interviews in there,’” Crossman recalled. “January 6, 2021 is a date that will be remembered long into the future, so it’s important to document the firsthand experiences of those who helped ensure a future for this country.”
10th Collective has continued to add individual interviews to expand the content.
“The most important thing was that this be a story told only by the police officers and their point of view,” Crossman said. “When you think about tragedies like this, we never think of the people on the front lines who sacrifice everything. Here in Charlottesville during the summer of 2017, so many civilians were affected by that weekend for the rest of their lives, and we don’t even know all of their names. In telling this story, we want to focus on the officers defending the Capitol.”
Crossman said the officers were affected in a variety of ways.
“One of them was a Trump supporter in the beginning, but on Jan. 6 he saw a different side of it,” Crossman said. “He listened to Trump saying he was in support of police officers and people in the armed services, and that’s all he had to say to get people to support him and blindly follow him. We had one gentleman who was in the U.S. Army and became a police officer and had people screaming at him that he wasn’t an American.”
