WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on Jan. 6, 2021, and the officers who fought and were injured defending it that day.<\/p>\n
Steps from the Capitol\u2019s West Front, where the worst of the violence occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because the Senate voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had delayed putting it up. Many Republicans had balked at installing the plaque. <\/p>\n
\u201cOn behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,\u201d the plaque says. \u201cTheir heroism will never be forgotten.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. Saturday. <\/p>\n
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) led the effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack and insurrection and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. \u201cWe owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,\u201d he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Trump\u2019s supporters before eventually pushing them out of the building. <\/p>\n
The mob of rioters who violently pushed past police and broke in were echoing Trump\u2019s false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden\u2019s victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running for safety and vandalized the building before police regained control. <\/p>\n
Five police officers and four protesters died as a consequence of the violence. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured. <\/p>\n
The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. The president, who has called Jan. 6 a \u201cday of love,\u201d on his first day of his new term granted pardons or commutations to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in the rioting. <\/p>\n
Trump was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the insurrection. The Senate did not convict him, and the felony charges were dropped after he was reelected in November 2024. <\/p>\n
Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers \u201cwho responded to the violence that occurred.\u201d It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up. <\/p>\n
After more than a year of silence \u2014 and a lawsuit by two of the officers who fought at the Capitol that day \u2014 Johnson said at the beginning of the year that there were technical problems with the statute and the plaque could not be erected.<\/p>\n
Tillis went to the Senate floor shortly afterward and passed a resolution, with no objections, to place the plaque on the Senate side. <\/p>\n
One of the officers who sued, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, said the lawsuit would continue. Hodges, who was crushed by the rioters in the heavy doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said Saturday that the overnight installation was a \u201cfine stopgap\u201d but that it was not in full compliance of the law. The original statute said that all of the officers\u2019 names should be listed, among other technical specifications. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering,\u201d Hodges said. \u201cOur lawsuit persists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Allison Robbert contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4188,51125,217,204,9959,7217,48,52,51,721,1846,47,50,49,96493,2325,3020,18764,1519,16220,72],"class_list":["post-209590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-building","tag-capitol","tag-day","tag-election","tag-installation","tag-jan","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-law","tag-lawsuit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-plaque","tag-police-officer","tag-president-trump","tag-senate","tag-trump","tag-violence","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}