Inside Jan. 6: Officer Harry Dunn on Defending Democracy

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks Christiane. Officer Harry Dunn, thanks so much for talking with us.

HARRY DUNN, AUTHOR, “STANDING MY GROUND” : Thank you for having me on. It’s good to be with you.

MARTIN: We’re talking about your book, and I think people will have seen you, anybody who’s followed this story, will have seen you. You’ve done a lot of interviews and you’ve talked a lot about your experiences on January 6th and following that. So I was just wondering what made you want to write the book? Was there a particular story that you wanted to tell that you haven’t been able to tell so far?

DUNN: Well, I’ve been very fortunate to have people care about what I’ve had to say, and I think that kind of led to the writing of the book. I was given this platform, so to speak, and individuals seemed to resonate with some of the things that I was saying. And if I could do my part to help inspire somebody, to educate somebody, to shine a better light about what happened that day, January 6th, then it’s worth it. Additionally, it was still cathartic and healing for me to write this book.

MARTIN: You started it by saying, we’ve all been through a trauma, you know, whether we wanna acknowledge it or not. Why did you wanna start that way?

DUNN: Because my feelings were front and center with this book. It was a very painful experience for me. It was very hurtful, a gut punch, if you would. The reason why I included all of us in that we need to talk about our trauma is because January 6th, which will go down in history as one of the darkest days in American history. The police officers, whether, you know, we were the ones who were catching the brunt of the physical abuse, it was an attack on our system of government, our democracy. So that affects every single American person whether they know it or not. So, you know, some people were thousands of miles away watching it on their iPad or watching it on their television, on their phone, and they felt some kind of a way. So all of us experienced some kind of trauma that day.

MARTIN: One of the things I found really moving about your book is that you talked about the fact that as a Capitol police officer, you took it very seriously. You know, that your job was to protect free speech. Your job was to protect the right of demonstrators to express themselves within appropriate boundaries. Because you point out that, you know, that wasn’t – you didn’t, you didn’t always take it that seriously. So how did it come to you?

DUNN: Yeah, no, when, you know, when I first started the job, I was this young kid that, you know, had got a good paying job and it was like, you know, a first real job, and it was a paycheck, and, you know, that’s what it was. And then it turned into a career. People come up to the Capitol all the time to express their grievances with their government, with their elected officials. And sometimes, you know, we would be out there on the perimeter watching these people protest with all their heart and their soul, and they’re just so passionate about any and every event. And then just sitting there listening to some of the grievances that they were raising, whether it would be, you know, Medicare being too high, or whether it be the cost of groceries or anything. So, you know, it was kind of like a personal growth and then started saying, you know what? This stuff does affect me. And I see how other individuals were so engaged and involved in their, their government, and it kind of made me take notice and then say, you know what? This is really an important part of our government. And I’m honored to have a part in playing a small part in defending those individuals’ right to do so. The First Amendment’s, you know.

MARTIN: Do you think that your fellow officers, to the degree to which you feel comfortable speaking for them, felt the same way you do that, you know, your job was not just to, not just to keep members of Congress safe, but also to protect people’s right to address their government. Do you think that other officers feel the same way you do?

DUNN: Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, I’ve always made it clear that I don’t attempt to try to speak for anybody but myself, but there are a few officers that, you know, just having conversations, talked about the demonstrations that we would see on a day-to-day basis up there. And I, without the shadow of a doubt, believe that my coworkers do take their individuals having those rights very serious, very seriously. I don’t know if everybody realizes the gravity and the magnitude that January 6th brought to the forefront, that democracy is in such peril, or it’s so fragile that we need to fight even harder to protect it.

MARTIN: Going back to the events sort of leading up to January 6th, when did you realize that this was gonna be, that this was different? This wasn’t like other demonstrations where you had worked?

DUNN: Looking back now, now that it already happened, there were signs that this showed that this wasn’t a normal protest. Like, you know, I’ll give you an example. Like, we’re in the middle, we were in the middle of a pandemic at the time, and, you know, the DC offices were closed. It was nobody was, it was, traffic was non-existent. So driving down into work, it would be a piece of cake and the drive that morning, I mean, 6:30 in the morning, there were people walking down north capital streets with flags. And this is in the middle, this is weird. It’s people out here, what’s going on? So being able to look back, I took that into account, but on that actual day when they got the calls, when we got the calls for the pipe bombs that were found at the RNC and DNC respectively, that kind of said, alright, this is, this is a really bad thing that’s going on here.

MARTIN: First of all, where were you when the violence erupted? Where exactly were you positioned?

DUNN: So I was on the east side of the Capitol where – not the west front, where they came from on the ellipse. And the reason why I responded over to the west side where this inaugural stage was being, was under construction. And one of the reasons why I ran over there is because they were calling on the radio for officers to respond over there. And I could hear the horror and the fear and the officer’s voices that were saying, send us more units over here. And I didn’t have a view of what was going on, but I just imagined the worst when you could hear the fear and the anguish in the officer’s voice on the radio calling for more backup.

MARTIN: You also point out in the book that, you know, look, January 6th was horrible for everybody in law enforcement, I mean, you, we saw it with our own, you know, eyes. I’m thinking about, you know, an officer who was basically looked like he was being crushed in the one of the doorways.

DUNN: Also Daniel Hodges, good friend of mine.

MARTIN: But there was also a level of kind of racist abuse that officers like you and other African American officers had to experience. And I was just, I’m just interested in what you, how, what, how do you think about that?

DUNN: I don’t believe that at its core that January 6th was this big old racist fest, this racist fueled event. I don’t believe that. I do believe that there were a lot of racist individuals there. Like the officer that you just mentioned, Daniel Hodges, he’s a white officer, and he was being attacked and pummeled by other white people in the crowd. So these people were opportunists that just took advantage and attack anybody that was in their way and stopped them. So I don’t think that said that race necessarily played an issue in their behaviors. However, the racist individuals let their thoughts be known how they felt that day towards people of color.

MARTIN: And is that the first time you’d experienced that on the job?

DUNN: On the job. That was the first time I had been called the N word in uniform. Correct.

MARTIN: Interesting.

DUNN: Which is really telling, because, you know the whole, you know, we black – back the blue kind of thing. I was surprised, but I guess maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was.

MARTIN: But there’s also this sense of like, gee, if this, if this had been Black Lives Matter demonstrators, it would’ve been dealt with very differently. And you know, there is that sort of through line. What do you, what do you say to that?

DUNN: See, I don’t know. I kind of gotta push back a little bit on that because Black Lives Matter demonstrators did come up to the Capitol and they did not assault police officers. They did not cross police lines. In fact, there were some officers who took knees with Black Lives Matter protestors in solidarity. So I think that I gotta push, I can only speak to like, just what happened at the Capitol. I’m not speaking about what happened in Portland or even downtown DC by the White House or in Minnesota. I can’t speak to any of that. But just at the Capitol, the protest that was at the Capitol when Black Lives Matter was there was just that. It was a protest. What happened on January 6th was a riot in an insurrection.

MARTIN: A number of officers died on January 6th and others took their own lives afterwards. And I just wondered how you learned of this and how did you process that?

DUNN: You know, that’s one of the things I feel like that’s overlooked in the whole January 6th talking points that there were real victims that day. You know, officer Brian Sicknick died the day after, Howie Liebengood, Jeffrey Smith, and two other metropolitan police officers died via suicide afterwards. And you know, anytime somebody loses their life we should, we should have a little bit of compassion. But it’s turned into, like I said, talking points. You know, if one side would say, you know, officers were killed on January 6th, then another side, will come back and say nobody died on January 6th? They, you know, so the human life element has been lost, has been taken. That’s very frustrating because, you know, I know some of the widows and I know people, the mothers of some of the officers and they would do anything to have their babies back, you know, to have their loved ones back. So that really gets to me in my core, because, you know, like January 6th has become this political talking point, but real life victims were, and lives will change forever that day.

MARTIN: And you’re still on the job though. I mean, you’re still on the force, and I’m just wondering what it’s like for you to be up there. You’re training officer, so you’re doing other things, but you know, there are members of Congress who are still serving, who have denied that this was a violent riot, that this was a violent mob attack, that this was an insurrection. There are members still serving who say that these were people who were just tourists. And I’m just wondering what that’s like for you.

DUNN: That’s another reason why I wrote the book. My book isn’t for those members of Congress. It’s for the American people to have a representation, accurate representation of what happened that day. Somebody who was there to tell their story so they can know what really happened. Because who holds the people in Congress accountable? The American people do, and they do it with the strongest tool that we have to protect, for democracy, and that is their votes. So, you know, educated voters make educated decisions and choices for people in office. So if people are still being fed misinformation about what happened you know, it’s up to us or people that were there to set the record straight, if you will.

MARTIN: I mean, there, as we are speaking now, a number of people have gone to trial. Many have been convicted, a few have been acquitted of some sort of charges. I mean, people are going to jail, but other people, other people are still maintaining that, you know, they didn’t do anything wrong or that they had a good faith basis for thinking that they were doing sort of the right thing. And I’m just, I don’t know. Do you feel that accountability is at hand?

DUNN: Well, that’s what makes it even more difficult, because my definition of accountability is to deter individuals from doing this again. However, what happens if, even if convicted and tried, these individuals believe in their heart that they were right, so, you know, what’s to stop it from doing it or happening again. I think that’s one of the most things that I struggle with the most with regarding accountability ’cause like I said, you have people who were there and people who incited and doubling down and saying that they didn’t any do anything wrong. So it’s really frustrating, and I don’t even know how to overcome that. But that exists. So as far as, you know, as far as whatever the government or the prosecutors or, you know, the people that are hand – or the Justice department, whatever they can do, but how do you, how do you combat an ideology with a prison sentence, you know.

MARTIN: How has your life changed since, since January 6th? You talk a lot about it in the book. For people who haven’t, you know, read it yet, or haven’t had a chance to hear you talk about it. I mean, for one thing, you’ve been very honest about the fact that you’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress.

DUNN: Yeah, I’ll be out with some of my friends and, you know, being around crowds, I’m a little on edge, a little bit, even more, like I said, I’ve always paid attention to my surroundings and such, but even more so now, like I’ll see a red hat and I’m wondering, is that guy a Trump supporter? Or, I’ll see the cargo pants and the tactical gear, and I’m like, wait, was that guy there on January 6th? So I’m doing a lot better. Like I said, we’re going on, you know, three years in January, so I’ve healed a lot. But as far as like the PTSD, you really have to fight to shape your narrative, to change your narrative and understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and is it important to do what you’re doing. While misinformation is still being spread and democracy is still at, you know, at a risk of being destroyed there’s still something that I can do. So, which is why I continue to speak out and seek accountability and justice.

MARTIN: And as we are speaking now four people who are associated with former President Trump have now pleaded guilty to various charges in their role in aspects of the January 6th experience, sort of in, broadly defined. I mean, it’s specifically in the Georgia election subversion case. And I just, I wonder, does that, does that help in any way? Does that feel like justice to you?

DUNN: No, I guess, you know, that’s a, like I said, a different case that’s going on down there in Georgia. I have been more focused about the one that’s happening on March the third, March the fourth here in DC. But seeing individuals with a plea – I believe they took plea deals that, you know, for whatever it is that they’re trying to save their own butts or whatever. But when I see individuals take responsibility for their actions, it’s a little bit encouraging. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know the depths and the specifics of what they actually pled to, or the, you know, what came, the consequences were, but at least they acknowledged that, you know, I’m guilty. So that’s, I guess, if anything, that’s encouraging, I guess.

MARTIN: And what about President Trump?

DUNN: That’s one of the guys who doesn’t think he did anything wrong. And like I said, that’s why – that’s a little frustrating. And I don’t know how I, I don’t know how to deal with that. And it’s frustrating, I guess I’ve heard this saying that truth is the best disinfectant, and as long as we continue – we meaning the entire country – continues to shed light and the truth. And we’ll, we’ll be, we’ll – that’s the only way we can combat it, I guess.

MARTIN: This is part of our history now, and at some point it’s gonna be in a textbook. And I’m just wondering, what do you hope that chapter will say?

DUNN: That even though that day happened democracy only got stronger after that. So, like I said, we’re still trying to figure it out now, but I hope that in the end this only makes us appreciate democracy more and everybody realize that they have a role in defending it. Like I said, whether that be an officer at the Capitol, whether that be an employee at the gas station in Wisconsin, they have a vote. So everybody has a role in defending this, and I just hope that people realize that this is something that we cannot take for granted.

MARTIN: Officer Harry Dunn, thank you for speaking with us.

DUNN: Thank you so much.