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Police balked at giving Michael Fanone his badge back. Then a reporter called.

2023-09-17 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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For more than two years, Michael Fanone’s muddied D.C. police badge was kept in a zip-top bag in an FBI evidence bin, dirt smeared across an imprint of the U.S. Capitol emblazoned on its face.

The man who ripped Badge No. 3603 from Fanone’s tactical vest during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol had buried it in his backyard in Buffalo, and investigators later seized it to use in the criminal case against him. That man, Thomas Sibick, is in prison now, and authorities said the badge, no longer needed for evidence, is being returned to the department.

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But Fanone — who resigned 11 months after he had been dragged into the frenzied mob, beaten unconscious and threatened to be killed with his own gun — said that when he asked for it back, the agency he once served balked at his request. When a reporter called to inquire, a D.C. police spokesman initially pointed to regulations that dictate officers’ badges be returned to the department, noting that even former chiefs are forbidden from keeping their official shields after leaving the force.

But on Friday, police said they would make an exception because of the “unique circumstances” of Fanone’s actions on Jan. 6, and would give the badge, mounted in a display case, back to him, if that’s what he wanted.

“It’s the only thing from MPD that I want,” Fanone said of the scuffed piece of metal that he described at the sentencing hearing for Sibick as “the emblem of my duty and what I had dedicated my life to for the past 20 years.”

How battered D.C. police made a stand against the Capitol mob

The initial tug-of-war over the badge had once again pitted Fanone, a celebrated ex-police officer unapologetic for his brash style, against his former department, which Fanone has said ostracized him for speaking out on behalf of officers who defended the Capitol and for publicly excoriating lawmakers and others who downplayed the attack. His advocacy for those who battled the mob earned him national recognition and acclaim, but he said he has also faced menacing phone calls, as well as resentment from some former colleagues who don’t approve of his outspokenness.

Fanone, who has testified against several Jan. 6 defendants and spoken forcefully at sentencing hearings, said he kept tabs on the case involving the stolen badge and told prosecutors and other officials he wanted it back when it was no longer needed as evidence. Fanone said he followed up with prosecutors after Sibick was sentenced to 50 months in prison, and they told him the decision was up to his department.

“Traditionally, badges go back to the department,” Fanone said. “I understand that. But I think we’re dealing with some pretty extraordinary circumstances.”

Fanone said that after his follow-up inquiries to D.C. police about the badge went nowhere, he enlisted the help of Christopher Macchiaroli, a former federal prosecutor in D.C. who is now in private practice. Macchiaroli had prosecuted some of the people Fanone arrested.

Macchiaroli sent a letter dated Sept. 9 to Stuart Emerman, an assistant D.C. police chief of the technical and analytical services bureau, requesting the department allow the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. to “release Officer Fanone’s shield back to him directly.”

Having received no response, Fanone described the situation to The Washington Post. And when a reporter asked about it earlier this week, a D.C. police spokesman pointed to policies that he said prohibited ex-officers from retaining their badges.

“MPD handles badges of former members consistently,” Paris Lewbel, the deputy director of communications for D.C. police, said in a statement. “Badges of members who separate from the Department, whether they resign or retire, are recycled for future officer assignment.”

(MPD refers to the Metropolitan Police Department, the formal name for D.C. police.)

Lewbel said at the time that sworn members of the force who retire in good standing can receive ceremonial retirement shields inscribed with the badge number and the word “Retired” on the front, so they aren’t confused with authentic shields. The spokesman said badges of officers who are killed or die in the line of duty have their sequence numbers retired. Fanone had resigned from the department, meaning he wouldn’t have been eligible for a retirement badge.

Then on Friday, the police department’s general counsel, Mark Viehmeyer, responded to Fanone’s representative.

The lawyer wrote that the department had intended to preserve Fanone’s badge and other “symbols and solemn mementos of” the Jan. 6 riot in an exhibit in the agency’s museum, which sits inside police headquarters and which officials plan to expand. But, Viehmeyer wrote, officials would give Fanone “the encased badge if that is his wish,” noting that the department “recognizes the significance of Officer Fanone’s badge as exemplifying both the heroism and tragic cost to MPD members who defended democracy on January 6.”

“To the extent that he would ultimately choose to donate the badge to MPD for inclusion in the exhibit, MPD would be most appreciative,” the letter concluded.

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Fanone said in an interview he does not want the D.C. police department to publicly display the badge. “Not a chance,” he said, adding that the agency doesn’t deserve to use him as a representative of officers who fought the insurrection because he feels it has not been fully supportive.

Fanone said members of his own department jeered him at last year’s Congressional Gold Medal ceremony, which he said “almost dissolved into a fistfight because a fellow officer took that moment to call me a disgrace to the badge.” Twenty-one House Republicans voted against awarding officers the honor.

The badge, Fanone said, represents his “deep personal connection” to Jan. 6, and he asserted that the department and an “overwhelming majority of officers” failed to support his advocacy. “They don’t get the right, nor do they deserve the right, to prop me up as some kind of greater representative of the Metropolitan Police Department,” Fanone said.

“I think I’ve earned it in a way most MPD officers never earned theirs. It’s symbolic of everything I’ve been doing,” he added.

Fanone was among a handful of D.C. officers who days after the insurrection recounted in stark detail the horrifying hours defending the Capitol. At the time, the department approved of Fanone’s remarks, which formed a definitive account of how hundreds of D.C. officers rescued a beleaguered and overwhelmed Capitol police force. The D.C. police chief at the time, Robert J. Contee III, said they had “saved democracy.”

D.C. police officials have said they supported Fanone’s push for recognition of officers, even as they bristled when he confronted lawmakers and gave unvarnished commentary they felt pushed the boundaries of public remarks that police normally give. CNN hired Fanone as an on-air contributor after he resigned.

Fanone said his experiences at the riot were unique. He was among the most severely injured officers, suffering a concussion and a mild heart attack after being dragged into the unruly crowd trying to force its way into the Capitol through the West Terrace entrance. Rioters beat him with poles, and someone tried to pull his firearm from his holster while shouting “Kill him with his own gun.”

While the mob failed to get his firearm, Sibick yanked free Fanone’s police radio — which Fanone described in court as his “lifeline” — and his badge. Sibick later pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting, resisting or impeding police and two counts of theft, and was sentenced to 50 months in prison. Court records show he is appealing his sentence but is not challenging his guilty plea.

‘Some are still suffering’: Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob contend with physical, psychological pain

Sibick did not offer an explanation for taking Fanone’s radio and badge. He also provided different accounts of what he did with the items. Prosecutors said in court documents that he told the FBI that he dropped them, then that he discarded them in a trash can on Constitution Avenue, and then that he took them home to Buffalo, 387 miles from D.C., and threw them in a dumpster in an alley behind a hotel.

When the FBI told Sibick it planned to review hotel surveillance video, he told agents he had buried the badge in his backyard, according to the court documents. On Feb. 26, 2021, the documents say, he bought a metal detector, dug up the shield and returned Badge No. 3603, mud and all, to the FBI.

Prosecutors kept the badge through court proceedings that ended in sentencing in July. They also have Fanone’s tactical vest, pictured in court documents that show “the hole caused by the badge being forcibly ripped off.”

Fanone said he kept the Congressional Gold Medal but has thrown out all D.C. police memorabilia.

Fanone said he is not sure what he will do with the badge. “Sometimes I think I’ll throw it in the Anacostia River,” he said. “Sometimes I think about mounting it and giving it to my children. But I think the choice should be mine.”

Wherever the badge ends up, the number that identified Fanone for two decades policing the District, and at one of the seminal moments in American history, will live on.

A police spokesman said that after Fanone resigned, a different badge with No. 3603 was assigned to another police officer.

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