Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone Transcript — Sept. 5, 2025

This transcript was minimally edited to remove obscenities.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:00:00):

We’ve invited these two guys here to talk about the implications of the administration’s takeover of Washington DC and an end game that is very unclear, especially for the city and for local law enforcement. The city, as everyone knows, has forever lived in the long shadow cast by the federal government, but the implications have never been more daunting since soldiers and federal agents were dispatched to the streets in Mass. Harry and Michael are with us today, as I said, to discuss this federal action and what it means for this especially fragile relationship between the city of Washington and the federal government, as well as the officers and the community that they serve. Michael Fanone is a former Metropolitan Police department officer in DC who nearly lost his life defending the US Capitol on January 6th. He suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury after being assaulted by the mob.

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In the aftermath, Fanon became a powerful advocate for the truth, accountability, and the rule of law. He is the author of the memoir Holding the Line. There was to be a follow on book, but I’ll let him talk about that if he wants to, which chronicled both his career in policing and the account of January 6th, Harry Dunn, who joined Michael that day on January 6th as a former member of the US Capitol Police Department like Michael, he was targeted by the mob end during physical attacks and racial epithets. As officers fought to hold the line in recognition of Harry’s role in protecting the Capitol, president Biden awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal. The medal is the second highest award I believe a civilian can get. That’s correct. Right? Yeah. And is given by the president to quote, citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country and fellow citizens. I’m going to turn it over to Michael just to talk briefly about the federal takeover and what it means for the city. We’ll go to Harry and then we’ll open up to questions, which I think would be a more, not that they’re great on their own speaker, but both have said that they’re anxious for your questions. So we’ll hear from them and go right to your questions. So welcome them both.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:02:57):

Okay. Thank you guys. I appreciate that introduction. I’m going to go a little bit more in depth into my career, just so you know that I’m not stuck here talking out of my ass, that I actually do understand a little bit, at least about what’s happening and why I believe it’s going to be so detrimental to law enforcement in the District of Columbia in the long term, as opposed to what we’re seeing in the very, very, very short term. So I did start my career as a United States Capitol police officer in 2001. I left the department after a year and went to the Metropolitan Police Department. I don’t know if all of you guys are from the area, but there’s 70 plus law enforcement agencies that operate in the District of Columbia. Pretty much every federal agency to include the government Bureau of Printing and engraving have their own police department. There’s one traditional law enforcement agency in Washington, DC that’s the Metropolitan Police Department. Essentially, if you call 9 1 1, we’re the ones that are going to respond.

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That being said, while I did about less than a year in patrol, I spent the vast majority of my career, 18 years in special mission units focused on narcotics trafficking and violent criminal apprehension. I’ve policed every single neighborhood in Washington DC at one point or another, and I also worked with the A TF, the DEA and the FBI is a federal task force officer, and I’m going to talk a little bit about that because we’ve seen this enhanced federal presence in the District of Columbia as part of the administration’s effort to crack down on crime and make Washington DC a beautiful place. And those relationships are important. I just don’t think that the way that they’re being utilized in this moment is efficient or effective. And I’ll tell you why. So when I started my career and first got into my first investigative unit, which was VICE at the time, and I thought we were going to be doing these high level narcotics investigations, I was super psyched to be there.

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And what I found out was we were essentially just a bunch of guys in an unmarked car driving around the city doing jump outs, which if you’re not familiar with the term, it’s pretty self-explanatory. You basically drive into a crowd of people hanging out and jump out of the car and approach them and try to develop some type of reasonable suspicion or probable cause. There were times where we made significant cases based on those stops. However, as you can imagine, the probable cause was flimsy at best. And oftentimes those cases resulted in a NO paper, which is the Department of Justice, who is the prosecuting agency in the District of Columbia. We don’t have state’s attorneys. They would dismiss those cases. And so a lot of what you’re seeing happening here, I know the administration has touted a thousand plus arrests that have occurred. Well, 80% of those arrests are bull—-.

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They’re misdemeanors. There are things like smoking marijuana in public, drinking in public, which I get it. It can be like a public nuisance, but we’re not talking about reducing the systemic crime problems that exist in the District of Columbia. And we’re certainly not doing it by sending the FBI, the DEA and the A TF to come down here and walk foot beats in neighborhoods in the district. These are investigative units and their best asset, their best use combined with local law enforcement is to utilize them in that fashion. When I worked as a task force officer, the benefit of the relationship was that I knew the neighborhoods, I knew the streets, and I had the human resources, human intelligence, the sources within those communities. And so what the FBI, the DEA, the A TF brought was federal dollars, which as a local police officer we didn’t have.

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I mean, there was a time when I was an NPD officer where we were buying our own tires for our vehicles. That’s how broke we were as a police department. So the feds would bring those federal resources, whether it’s electronic equipment we were doing, you can’t do a Title three case or a wiretap case in the District of Columbia without a federal partner. We just don’t have those resources. And so you bring a much more sophisticated element in, plus I’m a high school dropout. I’m really good at what I do as a cop, but when it comes to the paperwork and all that other crap, not so good at that FBI, really good at that assembling cases that are prosecutable really, really good at that. And so it was a mutually beneficial relationship. The way that they’re being utilized right now, and I know this from talking to former colleagues of mine at the Metropolitan Police Department that are in these specialized units, is while there has been a slight bolstering of their manpower, which is deeply needed, MPD is very understaffed.

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They are not actually engaged in long-term investigations. Why is that bad? Well, while the numbers are going down right now, this is not a sustainable practice. You can’t have the National Guard troops on the streets for an indefinite period of time. It’s very costly. I think it’s to the tune of a million dollars a day. And ultimately the National Guard really is worthless. They’re not a law enforcement agency. They’re not trained to be a law enforcement agency. It’s by opinion that arming them creates a significant danger to the public because if you end up with some 18-year-old kid that’s running around with an AR 15 and a handgun and all of a sudden sees something happen, doesn’t have the training to deal with it appropriately as a domestic law enforcement officer does, and then all of a sudden John Wayne comes out and we end up with a Kent State scenario.

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And so that’s why I think that is inherently bad. But even then, they’re mostly just being utilized. And from what I’ve observed, maybe you guys have different observations, but from what I’ve seen, they’re on the National Mall. I saw about a hundred of ’em two days ago over by the World War II memorial, which is great. It’s a cool memorial. I would recommend everybody take it in. I don’t know if I want you to take it in while you’re getting paid with my taxpayer dollars and with an AR 15 slung over your shoulder. I think that’s a little bit insane. I also think it’s really disrespectful to call up National Guard members, pull them away from their families and their jobs to pick up garbage. But again, that’s just me back to the law enforcement aspect of it. So what I’ve heard, and what officers have told me, and some federal agents that I talked to is that when they’re going out on these nightly jump out sessions where they pull into neighborhoods, and we shy away from that as an agency decades ago because of one you, you’re casting this big net, you’re making flimsy cases and you’re pissing off the community because I would say on a given night, I could stop in excess of 30 people and maybe pull one gun and maybe a significant drug case off of that back when we had open air drug markets in the District of Columbia.

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But I also stopped 30 people that weren’t doing anything wrong. And now I’ve just created 30 pissed off residents that live in the district that I might need to rely upon later on for as a witness to a crime for a whole variety of different things. And so that hurts an already fractured relationship between local law enforcement and the communities that they are charged with protecting and serving. And so the next component that you have there is, you see, many of us have seen, I have seen almost a celebratory reaction from local law enforcement officers to the addition of the troops, the feds, which is politicizing law enforcement.

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If there’s one thing left in this country that should be sacred, it is the idea that law enforcement is not politicized. I hate it when politicians say they back the blue. I would rather you just pass legislation to support law enforcement and shut the f— up because every time you open your mouth from one side of the aisle or the other, it makes my job that much more difficult in going out into the community and interacting with people, even if I don’t espouse any type of relationship with a political party. Which is why with the exception of being outspoken against this administration, which to me really is not a political thing, I really didn’t give a s— one way or the other. And I was very apolitical person when I was a police officer. I think that pretty much covers why this is f—– up.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:13:43):

On that note, Harry said,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:13:46):

I don’t, how do I follow that man? No, Mike’s a hundred percent right. Right. That’s how you follow it. Alright, that was it. No, I was a capitol police officer for under 16 years. And obviously we didn’t do neighborhood policing. Well, to a little bit of extent we did. I realized there was a problem with policing before I became a police officer from Prince George’s County. I grew up around this area. I’ve had run-ins with law enforcement before I became a police officer while I was a police officer. And I realized that we need good police officers. We need to rebuild the trust in communities that has been eroded.

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Even before this whole Donald Trump thing. There was always a, and especially in black and brown communities, no trust. Nobody liked law enforcement and it was just not a good relationship. But I came to realize we need the police officers. So I became one and going about my career, seeing all these, the media love to report unarmed black man shot or unarmed black man that’s always in the, I said, I’m not doing enough just being an officer, just existing. So I became a training officer, and that was surely in response to Ferguson, Missouri, hands up, don’t shoot that narrative that came out. And a lot of people, I lost friends that told me, Hey, quit. Don’t be a police officer. You’re part of the problem. Cops suck. F— 12, all the pigs, all the slang that you can hear directed at me. And I became a little change oriented. How can I do something? So I became a training officer, and I think by the time I retired or left the department and retire, I trained up upwards about 200 officers give a good example of what I wanted to rub off on them. Capitol police, our jurisdiction is very, it’s minuscule compared to the entire city, but we do have what’s called an extended jurisdiction where we were able to go out in communities if crimes were happening or somewhere surrounding Capitol Hill.

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So I would always like to go down where the Harris Teeter’s not there anymore. I know what I’m talking about down, down by 12th Street in the southeast. But we ride around and I would train the officers, we’d be riding in the car and I would just throw out hypothetical scenarios because fortunately for Capitol Police, we didn’t have to do a lot of running and gunning and stuff like that. Now, occasionally, but not often. So I would have to make up scenarios in my head, how do we respond? So I’d be like, all right, we’re turning in this neighborhood right here. It’s dark neighborhood. We see five black males sitting on the porch. It appears they’re throwing dice. Don’t smell marijuana, but we see they’re smoking something. Maybe a cigarette. What are you going to do? He was like, first I’m going to call for backup. Okay, why are you calling for backup? Well, this is a rookie. This is maybe two, three weeks out of the academy. He called for back. Why? Well, you’re not supposed to approach when you let dispatch know where you are. Correct. But why are you going to approach them? Well, yeah, well why? What did they do?

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Well, they’re suspicious. What does suspicious mean? Right? It’s that kind of stuff where communities caused fear and terror. Like Michael talked about, he made 30 enemies just to gain one gun off the street or something like that. So I was always believer in let’s strengthen and train police officers. How can we be better officers? And what’s happening now is such a slap in the face to actually want safe communities. And I think a narrative that has kind of been shaped during this whole takeover is people that are complaining about it don’t care about crime. And that’s problematic because we are all for safe communities. And yes, you may see an influx of arrest or the crime stats going down, but why is that people are afraid to come into the city. I think this is my second time in DC since it’s taken over, you look at businesses, numbers are down bars, restaurants, they’re down.

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People that live in Virginia, live in Maryland aren’t coming across here into the city. They’re significantly down. So if we’re scaring our way into safer communities, that’s not sustainable. So I think especially Democrats need to do a better job with the messaging saying, we are for safe communities, but this isn’t sustainable. This isn’t how you do it. Let’s get to the root cause of it and let’s fix it. Not just put a bandaid on it. Like Mike was saying, this is to the tune of upwards of a million dollars a day. I think I saw something today that the house isn’t expected to do the 30 day past the 30 days, and the Senate wasn’t either, but that’s because you have a mayor that’s now afraid and bending the knee, so to speak, instead of what appears what most people wanted to do is fight back against this because this isn’t sustainable. This isn’t a healthy way for communities to solve the crime problem that’s going on that does exist.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:19:44):

To add on that, I think for me as well as somebody who’s like a democracy absolutist, one of the biggest problems that I have with everything that’s happening here is that this administration did it against the will of the local government. If you really, it’s very easy to say that, especially as a law enforcement officer, the ends justify the means, but in a democracy, we know the ends cannot justify the means. And that these elected leaders, many of whom I disagree with vehemently, I think the city council with a lot of their legislation as a knee jerk reaction to these polarizing events that we all saw play out in front of us involving law enforcement and communities of color. But they took the pendulum in the as far left as they possibly could, and they did things like decriminalizing juvenile crime in the city is a huge problem.

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I used to work robbery T detail in the early two thousands and a hundred percent of the robbery suspects that we dealt with were juveniles. 100%. I think we made some insane amount of arrests in a three month period. It was like 60 some kids for a variety of whether it was armed robbery or assaults or carjackings. And so the city council and I understand the idea of these are kids and you don’t necessarily want to, there should be a rehabilitation element to that. But what we ended up doing was creating a diversionary program in which kids even charged with murder could be released back out into the community simply for the fact that they were juveniles, which to me is even set aside background. Insane. And most of the recidivist crimes that we saw here and still continue to this day are juvenile related.

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But the city council’s elected by the people. They are the representatives of the people of the District of Columbia. And in a democracy, that’s how the f— it works. I mean, what DC is like second of Baltimore, 99.8% of the residents voted for the Democratic candidate. We experienced another phenomenon that you may or may not know if you work like a law enforcement beat, you should know it, jury nullification. When jurors are made up of the community, they’re residents of the community. And when they decide that they don’t trust local law enforcement, they don’t indict cases. And so we can arrest all the bad guys we want the Department of Justice can decide we’re going to file these charges. But at the end of the day, if the community don’t trust, doesn’t trust you, they’re not going to indict your cases. The juries aren’t going to find them guilty. I mean, this is a huge problem in other cities like Baltimore where felony case work going through Baltimore, if you watch wire, it’s real. It just doesn’t happen. This rapid indictment grand jury just stopped indicting cases.

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And so we refer to ’em at the time as a runaway grand jury. But I mean, if you can imagine what that did to, we were talking about hundreds of cases that were presented to this grand jury, and they just wouldn’t indict them because they didn’t trust what the police were telling them. Huge problem. And so I don’t understand why local law enforcement officials, why aren’t they? I mean, even if they don’t want to speak up, you have representatives that understand these phenomenon. The mayor herself, I’m sure is aware of this phenomenon, and we’ve already started to see it in the grand juries, failing to indict what they see as political politically motivated prosecutions

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:24:00):

Sandwich guy,

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:24:00):

Right? And so sandwich guy that got charged with two felonies. There’s a ripple effect to that. And when law enforcement doesn’t trust or when the community doesn’t trust, law enforcement is a complete breakdown of the criminal justice system. And that is incredibly dangerous. And unfortunately what I see is the end result from what’s happening in the district right now.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:24:28):

Good place to start. Questions. Who’s up? We’ll get since we started in the back, the last session, we’ll start.

Michael Williams (00:24:39):

Okay. Thank you all for doing this. My name’s Michael. I work with CNN. Michael. I’m really curious, we’re seeing a lot of MPD officers participate in these ice jump outs now, or at least as sort of backup. Do you have any confidence that if your former colleagues saw somebody’s rights being violated, saw somebody getting beat up, that they would say something and put a stop to it?

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:25:02):

No. Zero confidence. And I’ll tell you why. It’s the culture. I don’t have confidence that Mike Fanon circa 2010 or really anytime before January 6th, would’ve said a goddamn thing. Had I witnessed some type of egregious abuse of a law enforcement officer’s power and going into the, I mean, I’ll tell you why they’re there. They’re there because they’re ordered to be there. They’re ordered to participate in this. Now what they’re told is you’re simply there for presence and to intervene. If something goes wrong, you’re not supposed to be participating in the actual ICE operation. You’re not supposed to be dealing with this person who is undocumented or for whatever reason, ICE has a warrant for them or maybe doesn’t have a warrant for them. I don’t know. But that’s the standing order, obviously the optics of it, the perception by the community is that MPD is working in conjunction with ICE and it’s semantics.

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It’s really like saying that they’re not is kind of bull—- because they’re there. They are. And that’s really why in the past, there are some politicians that will say how messed up it is that local law enforcement doesn’t support ICE. Well, that’s bull—-. Local law enforcement does support ICE. I mean, when I was a cop, I can recall at least two occasions in which ICE officers were in distress, but it didn’t happen because the way that the process worked, most ICE officers spent a hundred percent of the time down at court. They would only come across individuals. They weren’t doing proactive operations like you see now. They weren’t out on the street cosplaying as SEAL team six with armored plates and AR fifteens and all this other crap. They were waiting for individuals who were here undocumented who were charged with crimes. But there were times when they would conduct serve search warrants and things would go wrong and law enforcement would intervene.

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That being said, the reason that we weren’t out there on the streets conducting operations with them when they did it was because we have to police those communities too, and they have to trust us. And they have to trust that they know that when they call 9 1 1, even if they’re undocumented, that we’re going to show up. We’re not going to ask ’em about that. We’re only going to ask ’em about the crime that may or may not have been committed and make sure that they and their families are safe. And so when you blur that line, or really, I mean at this point when you just tear it apart, why would I call 9 1 1 if I’m here on a work visa or any other situation? Because I don’t know what, I might call 9 1 1 because I’ve been the victim of a sexual assault, but I’m here on a visa or I’m undocumented, whatever the case may be, and now I’m a victim of a sexual assault, and on top of that, I’m getting deported to f— God knows where. And then the friends and family members in those communities, it has an incredibly powerful ripple effect. And if you can’t necessarily communicate well, I mean that’s even more, that makes it even more terrifying.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:28:51):

I want to touch on real quick, when you said about the fate that you have that officers would step in two, maybe three things that they’re going to do, one that they feel empowered. I mean, Donald Trump said at a press conference when he announced this, do whatever the hell you want. That was a quote from the president to law enforcement. So you feel empowered or they feel afraid because they still have families to feed. They have jobs. I walked away from my job like, what the hell am I doing? Not because I just felt this moral clarity, or maybe it was that compounded with a lot of other things, but it’s hard to do to walk away from a security blanket to turn into a podcaster or somebody who’s begging to do speaking engagement so he can pay his bills. So they still have bills to pay too. Or the third thing, they’re just indifferent and they just don’t give a damn. Well, Trump just said, I don’t care. Well, did you see that? I don’t care. Let me do my eight hours and go to hell home. And that’s how a lot of people operate. So faith in them doing the right thing, it’s literally self-preservation for a lot of these officers. And they could care less about getting in the fray.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:30:15):

Well, I mean, the other thing on top of that is that a lot of these officers, when they witness that type of behavior, they don’t see it as egregious behavior. They see it as this officer’s using force, and I don’t really want to get in. I might, maybe it’s a little aggressive, but who am I to say? And I’m just going to keep my mouth shut because that’s the culture

Hannah Demissie | ABC News (00:30:41):

I have. Two questions. One is, with this federal takeover of dc, what’s the biggest fear you guys have about what could be a possible outcome or could happen during this whole process? And then my second question is, I’ve seen online a lot, certain law enforcements having masks, wearing masks, covering their face during arrests. Is that something that’s normal? And the reason why I ask is I’ve just heard from people in the community, specifically young women, just being afraid of potential copycats happening. And I’m just curious, what is the rules around that? And just standards,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:31:22):

First of all, with the long-term effect, if this becomes normalized, this is not okay, and the longer it continues, the longer people will start to say, oh, remember that time we had the national, oh, let’s just do that again. This is not normal. This cannot be considered routine occurrences and behavior. That’s what my fear is. People get used to this s— and just say, okay, this is just the way that it is. Now, as far as the mask, every police organization has different rules. Is it illegal? No, it’s not illegal. Is it against the rules Capitol police, we couldn’t wear anything that covered. That’s our rule. But you got to look at who’s enforcing the rules. Now, Christie Nome, is she going to tell ICE that, Hey, you don’t. She probably encourages it. It’s not illegal. I think that Congress has attached some type of legislation or even local communities. They pass all kind of laws. I think that that should be a start with a, I’m totally against the masking. I understand that.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:32:23):

Understand that it’s needed sometimes and undercover, and Mike could speak to that more, but for every walking down the street, walking down the mall, which absolutely not.

Hannah Demissie | ABC News (00:32:34):

Yeah, I was just curious because I think, yeah,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:32:36):

I’m not OK with that.

Hannah Demissie | ABC News (00:32:37):

The ICE arrest, especially on some college campuses, students being picked up, and that was a growing fear among people. Sorry, that was fear among people in different parts of the country, especially just young women of that inspiring copycats.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:32:55):

I mean, look at Minnesota, what happened in Minnesota, the shooting that happened with the former speaker, I forget her title, she was gunned down by somebody cosplaying as a police officer. Now obviously he had deeper intentions, but dressed up as a cop.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:33:13):

For me, I mean, there’s three things I kind of touched on ’em when it comes to what are my fears about the DC law enforcement takeover. One is like Harry said, that it would become normalized because it’s not normal. Two is my concerns about the National Guard being armed in some type of a Kent State incident. When it comes to, I think first, it’s interesting to me that ICE is the only federal agency that is currently masking each and every one of their agents as they conduct what they are now describing as routine operations on the street. And then also the enhanced military garb. That was not something that I ever saw an ICE agent wear about as tactical as an ICE agent. It was f—— khaki pants and one of those blue ICE raid jackets that was about as in a polo shirt. And so this is, they all look like SWAT team officers that are going out, though some of them are probably wouldn’t make it past the physical fitness requirement.

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But yeah, I mean, we had a policy in the Metropolitan Police Department, you could not cover your face. Now, I worked in special mission units, and the only exception to that rule was there were times when our office, if we were going to go do a search warrant or we were going to go out and conduct some type of high level arrest, we would want as many officers as humanly possible. And sometimes that meant pulling from our undercover officers to utilize them in that fashion. Obviously, we don’t want them when they’re mixed in with uniformed officers or officers who are readily identifiable, we won’t want them to be identified. And so they were allowed to wear masks the amount of times that that occurred, simply because we didn’t ever want to utilize undercover officers in that capacity. I could probably count on two hands. And that’s over a 20 year career in those types of units. So I mean, it’s one of the reasons, one of my side gigs is I’m a spokesperson for this organization, home of the Brave. And if you guys have seen those signs that are out there plastered all over DC that say, take off your masks, that’s me. I think it’s outrageous that these agencies are allowed to operate, or this particular agency is allowed to operate in such a anonymous fashion.

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Transparency in law enforcement starts with accountability and your ability to identify the agents or officers that you’re interacting with. And so I have a lot of issues with them doing that. And then on top of it, the justification coming from DHS and from the White House to me is just kind of bull—-. At first, they were talking about, I think it was, what’s the fat balled white dude? Holman? Holman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, terrible God, I hate him, man. So he said, it has to do with the fact that they got to keep these agents safe. Well, my response to that was, well, what about the other 890,000 law enforcement officers in this country that don’t wear a mask? So only ICE officers need to be kept safe, not the rest of us. And please elaborate on this epidemic of ICE-related assaults that are taking place on these ICE agents simply because they’re a part of this agency. And there are none. There’s no epidemic. I talk to people,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:37:30):

Sandwich guy got hit with the sandwich. That was kind of bad.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:37:37):

So there’s that. And then I think I heard recently the White House said something about they were wearing these masks because, oh, they’re wearing the masks because when they go out into the community, they don’t want people to see that they’re coming. And so they wear masks to disguise themselves. Otherwise, the people that they were coming after with ’em would’ve run away. Let that sink in. It’s a mask. It’s not like a cloaking device that prevents you from being seen by anyone.

Hailey Bullis | Washington Examiner (00:38:18):

So I have two questions for you guys. One related to this topic and one related more towards January 6th, if that’s okay. But my first question has to do with, you keep talking about the long-term effects of this kind of militarization of the DC Police Department and National Guard bringing in can have oval policing, can often have negative unintended effects. Do you think once the National Guard is pulled away, there could be potential for a crime soldier or anything to that effect because they’re no longer around? And then my second question has to do with the Republican-LED house has voted to establish a new January 6th committee, and I just am curious on your guys’ thoughts on that and how it makes you guys feel.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:39:04):

So the long-term effects, like you said, I believe that the numbers, the crime are lower because people are afraid right now to go out. And yes, will they spike back up possibly when people aren’t watching your every single move? Sure. But do I see as an epidemic? Probably not. I don’t. Then again, I don’t think so with regards to also the long-term effects trust, it is been eroded, and you just don’t get that back just by taking a, I mean, I think this is going to take generations to repair. I mean, we’re already on the downside of community relations and police with, look what happened with George Floyd, or not even just the response to George Floyd, we were already doing the downside and just pulling troops off the street is not going to repair it. I think that you’re fracturing generationally relationships between law enforcement and communities and look at where they’re being targeted to inner cities, democratic cities. It’s not just like they’re walking around up by Van Ness or something like that.

(00:40:24):

But with regards to the January 6th committee is the third one now, it’s literally just Donald Trump. It’s all because of Donald Trump. Why this is happening. He wants it to investigation, to exonerate him. And that’s what this is about. Look, I mean, look what he did with the Smithsonian. Hey, I want y’all to review everything. What type of history are y’all pushing? Is it history that I like or it is just to create his narrative? It’s bull—-. And every f—— lawmaker up there knows it too. And they’re just cowering the Donald Trump and his will. It’s BS. So

Cybele Mayes-Osterman | USA Today (00:41:12):

Hi, I’m Cybele Mayes-Osterman. I cover national security for USA today, and I wanted to ask you about the National Guards. So I’m curious, like you said, you have fears about there being a potential Kent State type of incident happening, having the National Guard on the streets like this. On the one hand we’ve been told, well, we see the National Guard out there in parks, shoveling leaves, stuff like this. But then on the other hands, they are armed now. So I’m wondering what your fears are about what could happen and then what you are hearing from former colleagues about their experiences interacting with the Guard and their fears that come from that.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:42:02):

Well, first, I mean, my concern is that obviously one is that the National Guard, if there is a large scale protest that occurs in the District of Columbia, that you have these armed national guards, people who are there. And then obviously you could have a Kent State scenario, but I’m also concerned about two Rando National Guardsmen, 19 years old from wherever in the United States that are here, maybe the first time that they’ve been exposed to big City living, and they’re walking around and they see something that they perceive to be a crime. And like I said, they youth and inexperience gets the better of them. And next thing you know, they’re trying to play like Johnny Law and end up in a scenario that they’re not trained for. I mean, national Guard troops do not receive any type of law enforcement training. None. Zero. I don’t care what they tell you that they get 24 or an eight hour class.

(00:43:14):

There’s nothing. I know plenty of National Guard troops, and they’re the first people to tell you unless you are, what is it, the MPS or whatever. And even they get a familiarization with the Fourth Amendment, so not, yeah, and I would sit here, I would argue that law enforcement officers don’t get enough training in those types of things. But the difference is that as a police officer, what institutionally we lack in training you make up for on the job experience. And so there is something to be said for, that’s why we have training officers, and that’s why you see a difference in cops mannerisms over the course of a career. I did a lot of really stupid things when I was 21 years old running around the city with a gun and a badge. And so that’s my fear when it comes to these National Guard troops is lack of training. And there’s a lack of direction. If you talk to them, they don’t even really know what the f— they’re doing. They’re just told to walk around an area, which is why you’ll see a hundred of ’em walking around looking at the Lincoln Memorial and just kind of doing it like willy nilly. That to me does not instill a lot of, I don’t feel safe and secure when I see guys just aimlessly walking around with guns. There’s absolutely no real mission or direction. And so that’s the concern when it comes to the guard.

Sophie Hills | The Christian Science Monitor (00:45:08):

IMAGA have also two questions. One is about recruitment and just that being kind of a perennial challenge, particularly in local law enforcement around the country and right now seeing hiring standards change for federal as well as local law enforcement and just your general take in whatever direction you want to go with that. And then the second question is just more on community trust, particularly here in dc. Do you see, or do you hear from your former colleagues, anything they’re trying to do to keep up a little bit of community trust, like holding listening sessions or any kind of outreach and also based on your law enforcement experience here, what would you do if you were still,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:45:53):

I’m glad that you brought up the hiring and the recruitment because I challenge anybody to find any law enforcement municipality across the country that is not understaffed. Find one everywhere you go. Every city is recruiting or throwing bonuses because what a horrible time to be a cop and who wants to do that already? And it’s all these things. So that’s a huge contributor to I think, crime, not having enough bodies to do it. You got officers, like I just said, that are just trying to make it through the day and then an hour left to go on their shift. Hey, we need you to stay and do another shift. And just like, all right, whatever. I’m just going to sit in my car all day and this next shift and just make it through the day or whatever. So hiring is a huge problem when it comes to that.

(00:46:47):

I’m going to let Mike talk about the communities and stuff, but what would I do that’s going on? I be a resistor. I don’t know what specific thing that I would do, but when I see something wrong, I’m going to say something. I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to bring attention to it. I don’t know specifically what I would do, but it’s easy to say what you’ll do when you’re not there. But I just know that if I see something wrong, I’m going to say something or do something about it. Just not, oh, that’s just the way it is. No, that’s not the way it’s,

Sophie Hills | The Christian Science Monitor (00:47:18):

Sorry. Not to put you on the spot about what you do in this moment with the Federalization stuff, but what you would do to rebuild trust as a local law enforcement officer.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:47:29):

So that’s what I saw.

Sophie Hills | The Christian Science Monitor (00:47:30):

Or if you want to answer the,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:47:31):

Well, no, like I said, what I said earlier, why I became a training officer because I realized that there’s a problem there and be like, well, I’m not going to quit and I need to do something. But what is that something look like? Alright, I’ll just start training the new officers that come in and I can get to sign off at the end of their six or eight week training. Hey, this officer is my recommendation. Go on the street. Or this guy needs some more training. He doesn’t get it. So just find whatever your something is. But there’s enough to do. You can find, somebody can find something to do. So community,

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:48:09):

What were the questions again?

Sophie Hills | The Christian Science Monitor (00:48:14):

Yeah, sorry. We’re all sneaking in multiple questions. I’m very guilty of that.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:48:17):

That’s what you trying to say. Oh, and a follow up too. A follow up

Sophie Hills | The Christian Science Monitor (00:48:21):

That’s supposed to this time and a follow up. I’ll stick with two, but kind of cheating because one has two parts, recruitment and just, you don’t have to answer both, but if either speaks to recruitment and with recruiting standards being lowered in some cases, either concerns you have, particularly as that connects with trying to rebuild trust. And then on the community trust one as a former law enforcement officer in dc. If you’re aware of colleagues doing anything right now to try to keep trust up in this moment, any kind of community events or what you would do if you were still in that position to kind of try to keep that relationship.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:49:06):

So with recruitment, I did not graduate from high school. I got a GED when I joined the police department. I don’t really, I worked with officers, local police officers, colleagues of mine that had GEDs and I worked with guys that had master’s degrees. I think when it comes to local law enforcement and community policing, I don’t think it’s necessary that you would have a bachelor’s degree or an advanced degree. I think that, I will say this though, when I came on the police department, we hand wrote reports and if you were really stepping your game up, we had electric typewriters.

(00:50:02):

And so technology was just not something that was available to me. And even to this day, I turned my computer off by unplugging it. I, I’m not sophisticated at all. And I saw how that was problematic, especially as policing techniques. We had access to more sophisticated tools that enhanced our abilities to do things like surgically remove criminals from the street as opposed to the jump out tactics of the nineties and the early two thousands. I will say this though, the Metropolitan Police Department experienced its lowest manpower in the late eighties and notoriously in, we had the class of 88 in 89 when we lowered our standards to the lowest that they had ever been. And that’s not just educationally. That’s like, well, yeah, I was caught with a gun when I was 18 years old. But yeah, I didn’t shoot anybody and it was disastrous.

(00:51:19):

Disastrous. We ended up with go back and do a little history, the dirty dozen, which were the 12 law enforcement officers that were working for the Rifle Edmonds Drug Organization. We had rampant corruption. We had the most police shootings to the tune. I think at one point we had one in five officers was on leave for having been involved in a police shooting. Which is why we ended up with that commitment with the Department of Justice to come in and oversee the metropolitan police department’s use of force because we were shooting everybody. And it was really bad for community relations when you’re

(00:52:10):

Shooting all the people that you’re arresting. And so that’s dangerous. I think it’s insane that we’re even talking about recruiting FBI agents that haven’t gone to college. I think that’s completely insane. FBI agents are not street police officers. That agency is not intended to be a street agency. These are investigators. And with the sophisticated, the equipment and technology that they have access to as an agency should lend itself to people that I think they should require a master’s degree, which if I’m not mistaken, is what they did require up until this administration decided that we’re going to have FBI agents with GEDs. I know officers that are out there that are trying to maintain the individual relationships that they have with the small communities that they police and officers beat his patrol area and they try to go out and instill that trust. But it’s very difficult.

(00:53:11):

But right now, and just like we saw a lot of anger, excuse me, and Vitral directed at us from the community after George Floyd and all those other horrific incidents, it is now universal in the district. You can go to aff fluent neighborhoods and you can go to low income neighborhoods and everybody hates you as a uniformed officer the same. And that’s just because they, I mean, I don’t blame ’em. They see what they see and they see these tactics that are being employed by federal agencies and they see NPD officers there. And so they’re angry about that. They don’t understand why police officers aren’t speaking up or speaking out or quitting their jobs. But I also understand why they’re not speaking out and why they’re not quitting their jobs. People got to pay the bills and speaking out, you’re going to end up like a Harry Dunn or a Mike Fanon and be a pariah in the law enforcement community for all of

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:54:25):

Eternity. They hate us and cops now for the most

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:54:27):

Part. Yeah,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:54:28):

They hate us. Yeah, not exaggerating. They depo. Yeah. I about to say, yeah, they got him a little back. Well, I want to say something too, somebody mentioned earlier, but I think politicization Mike about police and politicizing them. I think police, we bring it on ourselves too. The politicization, the FOP endorsed Donald Trump in the last three elections that he ran in. So I don’t think you can have it both ways. If you’re endorsing a political candidate, then now you’re subjected to, you inserted yourself by making a endorsement now. All right, bet all gloves. The gloves are off. We can get political now since y’all that OP weighted into those waters. So just wanted to bring that up earlier.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:55:20):

Any questions left? Can you tolerate one more

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:55:25):

Time? I’m happy hour to start. I about to say I got time. Yeah. Waiting on happy hour to start.

Grant Schwab | The Detroit News (00:55:30):

Thanks guys. I’m Grant Schwab from the Detroit News. I just wanted the last thing you guys said. Other cops hate you guys. You don’t get people off to the side telling you guys, Hey, I’m glad you’re sticking up for us. Or is it uniformly people who are still in law enforcement are like,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:55:46):

Oh no, I don’t want to say all. I definitely got some people, but as far as a percentage wise, pretty high ones. Yeah. But I got one in four, 25% maybe that actually do, which isn’t horrible. I guess I’ll take 25. Unless you’re taking a test. I guess 25% is pretty

Grant Schwab | The Detroit News (00:56:04):

Bad. Do you think that’s representative of the views of law enforcement in general or is that just the most vocal people?

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:56:14):

I think it’s representative. I think so. I mean, cops love Donald Trump. Cops love Republicans. Cops are Republicans and they love this type of s—. They just happen to be law enforcement now. At least that’s my take on it. What you think.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:56:30):

Well, I think law enforcement is a microcosm of society. I think that it definitely lends itself to be Republican leaning, especially in the era of maga. And why wouldn’t you? Donald Trump comes out there after years of you being abused and at least in your perception, abused by the media, abused by communities, politicians, politicians. So now it’s like, oh, now I got somebody on my side and we’re going to swing this pendulum in the other direction. And so that, I’ll be totally honest with you, and I’m just speaking for myself here. I was a huge asshole when I was a cop. I was incredibly difficult to work with. And so

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:57:19):

They

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:57:20):

Liked me when I left the department. I mean, I had my detractors because a lot of people, they didn’t like that I was so outspoken. And I didn’t just confine my conversation to January 6th, I started to talk about other issues involving law enforcement because I felt like we were not being transparent enough. And listen, transparency is not just body-worn cameras and turning them over promptly after a FOIA request. It’s actually allowing people to get to understand the culture and the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so that was what motivated me and then motivates me to come to things like this and talk to people because I want you guys to understand and is not culturally accepted in law enforcement. People still hate f—— Frank Serpico. And the guy brought down literally thousands of corrupt f—— police officers, cops that were selling drugs, killing people, I mean sexually assaulting women. And the guy’s still a pariah. So there’s that. But I would probably say most of them really hate me because I was probably an asshole to them at some point in my career. And now it’s just I’m a celebrity. So they can say whatever the hell they want.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:58:56):

They don’t say it to your face. Our faces though.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:58:59):

They do not do that.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:59:00):

It’s always, we hear about it.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:59:02):

I get a lot of, so I’ve never been on social media. I just recently got on social media and my brother handles all that s—. And so he set up a Facebook page for me, which I was like, who’s on Facebook anymore? But it’s like the Angry Boomers, which are all these cops. And so I get all these crazy angry guys from the police department that are sending me crummy messages at two o’clock in the morning. So yeah,

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:59:34):

We still get to this day. It’s crazy.

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:59:36):

You

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (00:59:36):

Wouldn’t last a day on the streets if my day or Jesus Christ.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:59:44):

Well, I hate to leave it there, but I do want to thank you for maintaining an R-rated discussion, but mostly good

Michael Fanone/Former Metropolitan Police Officer (00:59:56):

For the end of the day, gets everybody energized,

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:59:58):

Gets juices going, it gets you headed to the bar. But I do want to thank you. Am I back to you all? I do want to thank you for a candid and really important conversation. So thanks so much.

Harry Dunn/Former Capitol Police Officer (01:00:11):

I think if I make at least some closing remarks for you all, you have a lot of power in the way you shape your stories or shape your stories. Not shape the facts, but shape your stories. You can be accurate about the facts. And maybe this is why I’m not a journalist, is because I think there is a time where bias is acceptable, perceived bias, because a lot of times perceived bias. It’s not really a bias, it’s actually what’s really happening out there. So I think when I read headlines of certain things or the thing that grabs your attention, which I guess they teach you to make it a flashy headline, grab it, get them clicks in, and then you actually read the story and be like, yo, this headline is so bad. But I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m just saying, y’all have a lot of power in the media, so much to the fact where the president either hates you or loves you and it’s no in-between in the media and that’s not how it should be. It should just be getting your information and while painting the picture of where you got your information from too. And maybe, like I said, I’m not explaining that well, maybe that’s not why I’m not a journalist, but you all have a lot of power with your words and people either love something or hate something a lot of times because of how y’all shape it.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (01:01:43):

That’s very well said. Very well said. Thanks so much guys. Appreciate

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