Lawmakers award Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol riot responding police

Congress has passed a measure to honor the surviving officers who protected the Capitol building during its insurgence (Picture: AP)

The Senate has awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who responded to the deadly January 6 Capitol riot. The unanimous decision nearly seven months after the insurrection recognizes both US Capitol Police and Washington, DC Metropolitan cops.

With gratitude for the police officers’ service and commitment to public safety, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced the measure, which had passed the House floor in June.

‘January 6th unleashed many horrors, but it also revealed many heroes,’ Schumer said.

The bill awaits a signature from President Joe Biden.

Democrats hold a slight majority in the House, and many were threatened by former President Donald Trump’s fans who stormed the Capitol building to try to overturn the election results. Schumer, a Democrat, called some of the 21 House Republicans who voted against the bill hypocritical.

Schumer claimed they ‘were some of the same folks who likened the January 6th attack to, quote, a normal tourist visit, who deny the events that day were an insurrection’.

‘The same folks who screamed the loudest about the dangers of defunding the police, refuse to defend the police. The very police who shielded them from a vicious mob,’ Schumer continued. ‘For the life of me, I don’t know how they sleep at night.’

The Senate already presented an award to Officer Eugene Goodman, who led the angry, Trump-supporting mob away from the Senate chamber moments before the doors locked the lawmakers safely inside.

The House wanted to introduce legislation that would honor the entire police force that stood against the mob.

The new revised bill will give out three award types of awards to the following: the entire Capitol Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department as a whole, and the Smithsonian Institution as a plaque that lists all the law enforcement agencies that defended the Capitol, CNN reported.

Goodman will be singled out, as well as Capitol Police Officers Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries he sustained during the insurrection. It will also name Capitol Police Officers Howard Liebengood and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Jeffrey Smith, who later died by suicide, and those who sustained injuries.

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