Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
It had only been hinted at in previous public examinations of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection: Scores of rioters attacked police officers not just with makeshift weapons, stun guns and fists, but with racist slurs and accusations of treason.
Four officers, two from the U.S. Capitol Police and two from the D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, on Tuesday detailed the racism and bigotry they encountered during the violent assault on the Capitol. Their direct, harrowing accounts laid out the hours when the pro-police sentiment of supporters of former President Donald Trump was pushed aside, consumed by the fury of wanting to keep him in the White House.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told lawmakers about an exchange he had with rioters, who disputed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the last presidential election. When Dunn, who is Black, argued with the rioters that he voted for Biden and that his vote should be counted, a crowd began hurling the N-word at him.
"One woman in a pink `MAGA' (Make America Great Again) shirt yelled, `You hear that, guys, this n------ voted for Joe Biden!"' said Dunn, who has served more than a dozen years on the Capitol Police force.
"Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming "Boo! F------ n---- !" he testified. He said no one had ever called him the N-word while he was in uniform. That night, he sat in the Capitol Rotunda and wept.
Ahead of Tuesday's hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a member of the panel, said the Capitol and D.C. officers would provide insight into "what it was like to be on the front lines."
However, Dunn was also speaking to the experience of being an African American police officer, who make up 29 per cent of roughly 2,300 officers and civilians serving on the Capitol Police force.
Dunn said another Black male officer told him that, while confronting the rioters on Jan. 6, he was told to "Put your gun down and we'll show you what kind of n---- you really are!"
The panel's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, pressed Dunn further about how he felt being an African American officer facing down racists and enduring racial slurs in the halls of democracy.
"It's just so disheartening that people like that will attack you just for the color of your skin," Dunn replied. "Once I was able to process it, it hurt. My blood is red. I'm an American citizen. I'm a police officer. I'm a peace officer."
While Black Americans make up roughly 13 per cent of the U.S. population, they were roughly 11 per cent of all police officers in 2016 across a sampling of 18,000 local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Over 71 per cent of officers were white in 2016.
It's this kind of treatment endured by Black men and women in law enforcement that policing experts say makes recruitment and diversity among U.S. police forces challenging. The law enforcement profession has also struggled with its origins in America, dating back to the slave patrols in the early 1700s formed to capture people who escaped slavery and terrorize the enslaved into submission. Although many African Americans have served valiantly on local and federal police forces since the civil rights movement, data shows Black Americans are still arrested in disproportionate numbers and more likely to be fatally shot by police.
Another Capitol Police officer, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, wiped away tears as he recalled the story of his immigration to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, only to face fellow Americans who considered him a traitor for defending the Capitol on Jan. 6.
"It was very disappointing," Gonell said. "I saw many officers fighting for their lives against people, rioters (and) citizens, turning against us."
Gonell, an Iraq War veteran, also called out the disparate law enforcement response to the overwhelmingly white crowd of rioters and the response to racial justice protests in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd and the police involved deaths of other Black Americans.
"As America and the world watched in horror what was happening to us at the Capitol, we did not receive timely reinforcements and support we needed," he said. "In contrast, during the Black Lives Matter protest last year, U.S. Capitol Police had all the support we needed and more. Why the different response?"
Indeed, law enforcement agencies in dozens of cities last year showed overwhelming force toward BLM demonstrators. Many used chemical dispersants, rubber bullets and hand-to-hand combat with largely peaceful crowds and some unruly vandals and looters. By the end of 2020, police had made more than 14,000 arrests.
In January, as images and video emerged from the attacks on the Capitol, a racist and anti-Semitic element among the rioters became apparent. One man was pictured inside of the Capitol building carrying a Confederate battle flag.
And in the nearly seven months since the attacks, more video investigations revealed several rioters had flashed white supremacist gang signs and "white power" hand signals during the insurrection.
Gonell also called out the hypocrisy he perceived from many of the rioters who profess to support law enforcement -- "the thin blue line" -- but did not agree with those protesting over Floyd last summer.
"There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled for social justice during the national anthem," Gonell said. "Where are those same people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?"
"I'm still waiting for that," he said.
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
Quebec Premier François Legault reiterated that the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University must be dismantled while police remain 'on the lookout for new developments.'
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.