Police Officers Petition Judge Over Jan. 6 Plaque Being Placed In ‘Hidden’ Location

(AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

A federal judge has ordered the Architect of the Capitol to respond by next week to two police officers upset that a plaque commemorating their efforts to stop rioters from taking over the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not installed in a publicly accessible area, as required by law.

CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane reported on the updated situation Thursday.

Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and D.C. Metro Police officer Daniel Hodges “sued the Architect of the Capitol last summer, seeking to force the installation of the memorial that had been completed but kept in storage for years,” The Hill reported Thursday.

The plaque was finally installed at 4 a.m. on March 7, years after it was required by law to be installed. Work crews mounted it to the granite wall near the entrance to the Capitol’s West Front, as detailed by Olivia George with The Washington Post.

However, attorneys for the officers maintained in a March 10 court filing that the plaque was in an obscure location, out of the view of most visitors.

Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor who now works for the Public Integrity Project, wrote, “Hidden from all visitors, the current location is no different than the basement the plaque was kept in for years.”

“Senators unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution in January directing the architect’s office to ‘prominently display’ the memorial in a ‘publicly accessible’ part of the Senate wing until it could be permanently installed on the building’s western side, as required by a 2022 law signed by former President Biden,” the report said, continuing:

Despite assertions that the location was only temporary, Ballou pointed to the three‑year delay and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) resistance as evidence that it was “unlikely that the plaque will ever find a permanent—and legally required—home,” arguing the lawsuit should proceed.

Dunn and Hodges found the situation “enormously frustrating,” Ballou wrote, and “see this latest move as part of a yearslong effort to keep the plaque, and more generally, the history of January 6, 2021, literally hidden from the public.”

Although nearly 1,600 people were prosecuted for their part in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, President Donald Trump pardoned and commuted the sentences of nearly all the rioters when he retook office in January 2025.

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