Capitol Police repeatedly used lethal force on protesters early on Jan. 6, video shows
In the span of less than 10 minutes after a huge crowd of protesters filled the U.S. Capitol West Plaza beneath the inauguration stage on Jan. 6, Capitol Police repeatedly used lethal force on the crowd, targeting people in the head, neck, face, and upper body — actions one use-of-force expert called “criminally negligent.”
During that brief span, at least 16 people were shot with kinetic-impact projectiles, including nine who took shots to the top of the head, face, and base of the neck, according to Capitol Police surveillance video obtained by Blaze News.
‘We need munitions! Unload! Unload it all! Take ’em out!’
The rounds are designed to be shot at or below the waist or skipped off pavement to strike the legs and cause trauma and “pain compliance.” None of the rounds observable on the surveillance footage struck below the belt, putting all of the observable rounds in dangerous and potentially lethal territory.
The targeting of the crowd and one graphic, bloody injury to a protester’s face enraged the crowd and appeared to lead to a large escalation of violence toward police, including the throwing of water bottles and flagpoles and the use of pepper spray and bear repellent, the video showed.
Deputy Police Chief Eric Waldow claimed in a U.S. Capitol Police radio dispatch about 1:11 p.m. that his officers were using “indirect firing,” but the department’s surveillance video contradicts that claim.
Waldow also said he gave “repeated warnings” to the crowd to disperse or face chemical munitions, but video shows he did not have a bullhorn, and no warnings could be heard on ground-level video or the USCP surveillance video.
He ordered Capitol Police grenadiers to open fire on the crowd at 1:06 p.m.
"I got a crowd fighting with officers, pushing, throwing projectiles," he broadcast. "I have given warnings about chemical munitions. I need the less-than-lethal team positioned above me to identify the agitators and start deploying. Launch, launch, launch!"
Stan Kephart, an expert witness on police use of force who reviewed the Jan. 6 surveillance video, said firing crowd-control weapons from an elevated platform into a dense crowd and striking targets above the shoulders is both “criminally negligent” and “potentially a lethal act.”
“There is a wealth of clear and convincing evidence here that police were not trained or equipped to move, disperse, and arrest stragglers,” Kephart told Blaze News. “Instead they adopted a punishment tactic, inflaming the crowd and resulting in injury that they are responsible for.”
‘If you really want to start a riot, shoot them in the head.’
The grenadiers who fired on the crowd from the “crow’s nest” outcropping during the first hour included training officer Shauni Kerkhoff, Sgt. Adam Descamp, and Sgt. Gary Sprifke, Blaze News has learned. Officer Bret Sorrell stood in the crow’s nest holding a riot shield, video showed.
Blaze News asked for comment from Capitol Police Public Information Officer Timothy Barber and Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan, but did not receive a reply.
The number of protesters struck with deadly force by crowd-control weapons in the early minutes of Jan. 6 is much higher than previously known, the surveillance video showed.
The fusillade of so-called “less-lethal” crowd-control weapons came in response to thousands of protesters who streamed onto Capitol property after a lightly defended police line near the Peace Memorial was breached at 12:53 p.m. Most of the early crowd ended up on the West Plaza beneath the “crow’s nest” outcropping where presidents-elect take the oath of office.
The massive, amped-up crowd caught Capitol Police off guard. There was insufficient security to defend the Capitol — in part because many officers were diverted to respond to two pipe bombs discovered during a 25-minute span at the nearby Democratic National Committee building and the Capitol Hill Club next to the Republican National Committee building.
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Surveillance video captured from the Lower West Terrace captured the flight of .68-caliber yellow marking rounds and red pepper rounds from powerful FN 303 projectile launchers. Produced by FN America, the FN 303 is powered by 3,000-psi compressed air. Rounds travel at 300 feet per second. A Tippmann 98 pepper-ball rifle was also used on the crowd. Most of the rounds were fired from less than 50 feet away, video showed.
Targeting the head with kinetic-impact projectiles is prohibited by manufacturers and industry safety standards due to the risk of fatal injuries. It is considered lethal force. The website of FN Herstal, parent company of FN America, stresses the point, saying the company “forbids users from aiming at the head.”
“The primary effect of the projectile is trauma, which directly neutralizes the aggressor,” the FN America website says. “Secondary effects from the projectiles can be delivered via a chemical payload depending on mission requirements.”
Operators of less-lethal crowd-control weapons are trained not to aim at or strike the head, face, eyes, ears, throat, neck, spine, kidneys, or groin.
A retired U.S. Army special forces operative who has used the FN 303 launcher and other less-lethal weapons in overseas missions said firing at heads from an elevated perch “will cause such rage afterward.”
“If you really want to start a riot, shoot them in the head,” he told Blaze News.
The bombardment of the early crowd is the latest controversy on weapons and tactics used by Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department on Jan. 6.
Minutes after the less-lethal projectile launchers were unleashed, MPD flowed onto the West Plaza, spraying protesters with high-velocity oleoresin capsicum, commonly known as pepper spray.
After pushing protesters back and forming a police line with bicycle-rack barricades, MPD officers began lobbing dozens of suspected incendiary grenades into the crowd and firing 40mm shells containing plastic pellets, beanbags, and tear gas. Some 40 munitions were fired or lobbed into the packed crowd on the north side of the plaza over the course of an hour, video showed.
At 1:18 p.m., a Capitol Police supervisor broadcast instructions to keep firing at the crowds. “We need munitions!” he shouted to dispatch. “Unload. Unload it all! Take ’em out!”
Pain compliance
Kephart said the descriptor “less-lethal” weapon depends on the launchers being used in a proper and responsible manner as specified by the manufacturer. Otherwise they can easily be lethal weapons.
“All launchers and chemical munitions are ‘pain compliance’ devices first and predicated on compliance, with the pain of the launcher’s impact or the gas, or singularly the beanbag or dowel impact pain. That is why they are to be fired at the belt line or skipped off the ground.
“Additionally, the accuracy factor in deploying these launchers is poor,” Kephart said. “Unlike a rifled bullet, the projectile wobbles in flight due to the absence of rifling stabilizing it in flight.”
A U.S. Department of War less-lethal weapons expert and training instructor told Blaze News that firing into a tightly spaced crowd has great risks that he would not have taken that day. He examined the surveillance video at the request of Blaze News.
‘The escalation of force totally amplified these small groups of people.’
“I know, myself, wouldn’t have felt comfortable sending those rounds into a crowd knowing they would impact face/head target areas and definitely not guaranteed for the intended target,” said the expert, who asked not to be identified by name or title. “Nor would I have advised those around me to do the same. As an instructor, you lead by example, especially being on the line and controlling those around you, and maintaining integrity/continuity/accountability for every round.”
One of the Capitol Police officers whom video showed firing on the crowd with a Tippmann 98 pepper-ball rifle was Shauni Kerkhoff, a certified trainer on the proper use of crowd-control weapons. Pepper balls struck protesters in the early crowd in the head and face. Two riot-gear-clad Capitol Police officers were also struck with pepper rounds, including one who took a shot to the rear of the helmet.
A now-former Capitol Police Civil Disturbance Unit officer who was on the police line beneath the grenadiers said verbal warnings would have been worthless with the extreme crowd noise and stiff winds on the West Plaza. Blaze News asked the former officer to review the surveillance video.
“You really think people were listening with all the noise?” asked the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He [Waldow] probably saw everything that was going on and panicked, or at least that's what I feel when I hear him say ‘launch!’ multiple times.”
The former Civil Disturbance Unit officer said repeated attempts to push through the early police line were made by small groups. “I think they could have been contained easily, but the escalation of force totally amplified these small groups of people,” he said.
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The Department of War expert said emotions can be inflamed when crowd-control weapons are used improperly.
“Some of the intended targets and where they hit enticed the crowd to react emotionally and feel they were being targeted or felt the need to protect themselves,” he said. “First aid for the crowd within the crowd was provided, but that’s also enough for an already emotional crowd at that point to [go] one of two ways: become louder and more emotional or take some type of action to start defending themselves.
“In my line of work, [that’s] something you want to avoid altogether,” he said. “It does not take much for a crowd to become unruly or violent.”
The FN 303 launcher was implicated in the 2004 killing of a Boston woman shot in the eye socket by police during a Boston Red Sox American League pennant celebration.
The fusillade of projectiles was fired by grenadiers from the Capitol Police Civil Disturbance Unit, the first of whom arrived in the “crow’s nest” outcropping at 1:01 p.m., security video showed.
Amped-up crowds
From the time the crowd filled in the plaza and police began to establish a hastily formed line, protesters were seen in animated, heated discussions with police. One man carried a sign that read “Expose Election Fraud” on the top and “Playing for Blood” on the bottom. A few rows behind him, a man held up a black baseball bat while another raised an empty axe handle.
A large man in a tan coat and black cap was pushed back by an officer with a riot shield, causing him to fall. As he began to get up, an officer under the scaffolding to the south tossed a tear-gas canister at the feet of protesters and the cloud of gas swirled out into the crowd.
Police used their shields to start pushing the crowd back. Scuffles broke out along the farthest southern police line, with protesters surging and then being pushed back by police. Two of the men in the scrum were a short time later targeted for less-lethal weapons fire.
‘They shot him in the f**king face!’
At approximately 1:06:29, a grenadier fired a .60-caliber fin-stabilized projectile from a compressed-air FN 303 launcher that struck a black-cap-clad protester in the head. The impact blew the man’s hat off, video showed. The round bounced off his head and struck a nearby riot officer.
Just prior, video showed the man was in the second row of a group surging toward the hastily assembled police line. As police pushed the group back, the projectile screamed past the Trump 2020 flag the man carried, striking him in the left side of the head.
Seven seconds later, a man in a tan jacket was struck by a projectile on the brim of his Make America Great Again cap. The round deflected off the cap and struck his upper right chest. He flinched, grabbed his head, and crouched down, video showed.
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Some 30 seconds later, a man wearing a light blue sweatshirt near the police line was struck in the back at the base of his neck. The projectile ricocheted into the crowd. When the man turned around, another round struck his upper chest and dropped to the ground.
A man in a blue sweatshirt who was pushing an officer was shot in the back at about 1:07 p.m., video showed. The projectile ricocheted west into the crowd. The man next to him, who was also scuffling with officers, was targeted for projectile fire, but the round struck his backpack and fell to the ground.
Joshua Black of Leeds, Ala., was the next person to take a potentially lethal shot from above. At 1:07 p.m., video showed the yellow FN 303 projectile striking him in the left cheek. Unlike some of the other projectiles, this one did not bounce off or ricochet. It punched through Black’s cheek and embedded in his mouth.
Black bled profusely, the blood forming a pool on the ground that was still visible hours later. Bystanders immediately tended to his wound. One of them turned to the crowd and shouted, “They shot him in the f**king face!”
“This is a peaceful protest,” a woman shouted, according to ground-level video obtained by Blaze News. “Peaceful!” Another bystander shouted, “We are witnessing tyranny. We are witnessing tyranny right now.”
While Black was getting attention for his wound, a pepper ball fired from above struck a Capitol Police CDU officer in the back of the helmet, sending a cloud of pepper powder into the air. A second shot narrowly missed another officer’s head and exploded on the officer's riot shield, video showed.
‘Typically, I aim for the ground.’
The bloody scene surrounding Black caused numerous members of the crowd to begin shouting and pointing at the line of riot-gear-clad Civil Disturbance Unit officers on the plaza. Several pointed up to the inauguration balcony in an accusatory fashion, while others issued middle-finger salutes, video showed.
Waldow ordered the less-lethal unit to target a man wearing a baseball batting helmet and carrying an axe handle with an American flag attached to one end.
“Have the less-than-lethal target the subject with the baseball hat and the axe handle and the subject with the gas mask and the American shirt, the American flag shirt. He’s assaulting an officer now,” Waldow said on police radio.
Shortly, an FN 303 round zoomed at the man’s face, appearing to clip his chin before striking his gloved hand. Minutes later, video showed blood running down the man’s left cheek. The man was shown on surveillance video at the police line minutes earlier, but it’s not clear if he shoved or struck an officer.
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A short distance away, a man in a blue winter coat was struck in the right side of the neck or base of the skull by a projectile. The round bounced off his head and struck a nearby man in the leg.
The man in the blue jacket knelt down to lend aid to the man who had been shot in the back moments earlier. After he stood up, he realized he was tracking through Black’s blood on the ground. He pointed down at the huge bloodstain and looked at the police line. He then went to the line and began shoving officers.
At this point, a sizeable group was now battling with police. Several men in the crowd aimed liquid and foam pepper spray at the officers. Projectiles, including flagpoles, water bottles, and traffic cones, were heaved at the police line, video showed.
Police surged into the crowd in what appeared to be an attempt to check on the injured Black. While officers tried to help Black off the ground, a rioter in a bicycle helmet and a dark face covering aimed a stream of pepper spray at several officers and might have hit the supine Black as well, video showed.
Training officer testified
Kerkhoff, who joined the U.S. Capitol Police after college in 2018, was the first witness against Guy Wesley Reffitt in the first Jan. 6 federal criminal trial in March 2022. She told a jury that she fired pepper balls at Reffitt as he scaled the Northwest Steps. When that didn’t stop Reffitt, she said, another officer fired at Reffitt with the FN 303 launcher.
She testified that she was a trainer for the Tippmann 98 rifle and the FN 303 launcher. Three weeks after Jan. 6, Kerkhoff was a less-lethal weapons instructor at a joint training event with the Maryland Army National Guard’s 115th Military Police Battalion.
In her trial testimony, Kerkhoff said the pepper-ball rifle is meant to cause some pain to the target to coerce compliance.
"So it has a small amount of pain compliance. So it should hurt a little bit. So that should deter actions,” Kerkhoff said in her March 2, 2022, testimony. “As well as when the ball hits something, it will — it is filled with PAVA powder, so it will launch that PAVA powder into the air and will affect the nasal passages as well as the eyes, causing stinging, burning."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler asked her, “What do you aim for when you first start launching?”
“Typically, I aim for the ground,” Kerkhoff replied.
Noting her previous testimony about experience with the Tippman 98 rifle, Nestler asked Kerkhoff about her knowledge of the more powerful FN 303 launcher. “Was that something you were trying to use or are you just familiar with?” Nestler asked.
“No, I am an instructor on both of those weapons,” she replied.
The former Civil Disturbance Unit officer told Blaze News that Kerkhoff left the U.S. Capitol Police about six months after Jan. 6 and that he had since been unable to reach her. Her colleagues heard she went to work for a three-letter federal intelligence agency, he said.
“She immediately wiped her social media, phone numbers, and email accounts,” he said. “Nobody was able to reach her after that.”
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