![]() local, comes over to Fanone and essentially says he has politics to manage. ![]() Capitol on January 6, that still do not accept the reality of what January 6th was.”Īfter the meeting, he writes, Gregg Pemberton, who leads the D.C. “And it’s a loyalty to Donald Trump because he says things like, ‘We love our law enforcement officers.’ And, you know, there’s a lot of police officers at the Metropolitan Police Department and other law enforcement agencies that participated in the defense of the U.S. “In reality, what it is is Trumpism,” Fanone tells me by way of explanation. A local honcho, meanwhile, gives Fanone grief for appearing on CNN “when they talk bad about law enforcement.” And Yoes, to Fanone’s amazement, tells the room that Trump, at FOP insistence, had in fact told the crowd to stand down that day. hall, Dunn is scolded after asking why the leadership hadn’t defended officers against the claim that the shooting of Ashli Babbitt was murder. In a meeting he chronicles at the union’s D.C. They hadn’t said the wrong thing per se, but considering how loud the union was with denunciations of anti-cop politicians, and how quick its spokespeople were to note stories of police attacked on the job, he felt the tone of their Jan. Fanone quickly soured on the FOP, which he felt had been too quiet about the insurrection. The saddest parts of the book are almost certainly the interactions with fellow police. And the tone of betrayal that permeates the book. Hence the meetings with Capitol Hill titans, and the appearances on TV, and the testimony at hearings. “I just want people to fucking recognize what happened on January 6,” he says. His monomania also made him a polarizing figure among law enforcement and others. In the book, though, the everyman soon finds himself in an unexpected position: Instead of accepting the thanks of a grateful capital, he winds up becoming an activist of sorts, militating on behalf of the law enforcement who faced the mob - and, eventually, on behalf of actually remembering the event. 6, the everyman cop who charged into danger in order to protect the big shots. ![]() Combined with the tattoos and the dark piercing eyes, Fanone’s refusal to speak in PR lingo helped turn him into a kind of spokesperson for the heroes of Jan. A 69-minute recording of one of our interviews featured another 85 permutations of the word, or more than one per minute. There are 155 F-bombs in the book’s 220 pages. ![]() In print and in person, Fanone turns out to be the same guy as he was in his profane cable debut. The clip went viral, turning Fanone into a local celebrity of sorts. “Thank you, but fuck you for being there,” Fanone responded. ![]() He also writes thoughtfully about policing.īut as vivid as Fanone’s descriptions of the violence are, the most memorable parts of the book concern the months after the insurrection, as Fanone recovered from his injuries - and significant chunks of Washington seemed eager to stop thinking about what had happened.įanone’s Beltway quasi-fame really took shape about a week after the riot, when a CNN interviewer asked what he’d say to members of the mob who rescued him. 6 that’s alternatively infuriating (when Fanone and his partner self-deployed to the Capitol after hearing about the disturbance on the police radio, they were initially stopped by a Capitol cop because their city police vehicle didn’t have the proper parking pass) and harrowing (“I’ve got kids!” Fanone screamed as rioters yelled to kill him with his own gun). We learn a bit of Fanone’s backstory (teenage knucklehead turned punk rocker turned decorated undercover cop) and are treated to a first-person account of Jan. In some ways, Hold the Line - written with my friend and former colleague John Shiffman, now an investigative reporter for Reuters - might seem like your standard quickie book by a flash-in-the-pan hero. And, you know, every conversation that I had was intentional and every interaction I had was intentional.” “And then the minute I parked my car and got out, it was like, you just turn a switch on. “I’d casually make the drive to the Hill, relax myself” using breathing exercises designed to lower blood pressure and calm nerves. “I approached those interactions in the same way that I approached doing an undercover drug buy or participating in any other narcotics operation,” Fanone tells me. ![]()
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