Jan 6 Plaque Honoring Police Who Defended The Capitol Finally Installed Under Cover of Night

Washington Post X screenshot

A plaque honoring police who defended the U.S. Capitol from January 6 rioters has finally been installed just steps from where the armed crowd broken into the building seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s election loss by force.

The memorial plaque, that was approved by Congress and required by law to be installed by March 2023, was finally bolted to the wall of the Capitol by an overnight work crew early Saturday morning.

Washington Post reporter Olivia George eloquently described the scene:

In the predawn darkness Saturday, around 4 a.m., staff with the Architect of the Capitol bolted the bronze plaque to a granite wall near an entrance on the west front, close to where the armed crowd had amassed and scaled scaffolding set up for the inauguration. They wheeled the plaque, stored in plywood, across the stone basement floor and guided it through the double doors. They raised the tribute with a jack table and began bolting it to the wall, the clang of their tools ringing out through otherwise empty hallways.

“Here’s the scene at 4:15am,” George posted to X. “The employees stepped away to get a tool. They checked again & again to get the plaque straight—extra tricky because apparently the floor isn’t level here. Next they added a nearby QR code. It links to names of officers who served. 45 pages of names.”

The plaque, which was once declared  “not implementable” by a spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), now reads, “On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

The words are followed by the names “of almost two dozen local, state and federal law enforcement agencies including the D.C. police, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Capitol Police, the National Guard and the Maryland and Virginia state police,” George wrote.

“The quiet installation…marks the latest turn in the contested effort to remember Jan. 6, as Trump continues to reframe the riot as patriotic and the rioters as victims of a weaponized justice system,” George wrote, noting that “on the first day of his second term” Trump “granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack.”

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