凤凰城——约书亚·马修·布莱克在一次采访中说油管(国外视频网站)视频显示，1月6日，当人群冲进大楼入口时，他正在保护美国国会大厦的一名官员，这名官员被胡椒喷雾喷到地上。
“放他出去，他完了，”布莱克声称已经告诉暴徒。
但是联邦检察官说监控录像不能支持布莱克的说法。他们说他承认他想让警察走开——因为警察挡住了他进去的路。
到目前为止，在1月6日的叛乱中被指控的400人中，至少有12人对他们在国会大厦与官员的遭遇提出了可疑的指控。最常见的论点是，他们不能犯任何罪，因为警察站在旁边欢迎他们进去，尽管混乱笼罩着政府大楼，暴徒们越过了警察的屏障，喷洒化学刺激物，打碎了窗户。
1月份阻止乔·拜登(Joe Biden)获胜认证的混战是由时任总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的一群支持者煽动的，他们声称热爱执法，并嘲笑去年在明尼阿波利斯警察杀害乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)后震撼全国的大规模警察改革抗议活动。
但他们很快在一次又一次的暴力冲突中向警方报案。
“我们在夏天支持你们，”一名抗议者对三名警察尖叫道，他们被几十名男子堵在门口，尖叫着让他们让开。“当整个国家都恨你的时候，我们支持你!”
国会警察没有计划暴动。他们寡不敌众，增援部队花了几个小时才到达——这是一次巨大的失败，目前正在调查中。在整个起义过程中，警察受到了伤害、嘲弄、嘲笑和威胁。一名国会警察布莱恩·西克尼克在暴乱后死亡。
接受美联社采访的官员表示，警方必须自己决定如何击退他们。他们说，没有方向或计划，他们被告知不要向人群开枪。一名警察从大楼的一边跑到另一边，与暴徒肉搏。另一个人决定响应任何遇险警察的电话，花了三个小时帮助那些被熊喷雾或其他化学物质固定住的警察。
三名警察给一名暴徒戴上了手铐。但是一群人聚集在一起，带走了被捕的人，手铐还在。
尽管如此，一些暴徒声称警察放弃了，并告诉他们这座建筑现在是他们的了。一些人——包括一名被指控试图摘下一名警察的防毒面具，试图让这名警察承受喷雾——声称是在保护警察。
新墨西哥州圣达菲一家国防承包商的雇员马修·马丁承认自己在大楼里，他声称警察在人们走进国会大厦时为他们开门。
马丁的律师丹·克朗(Dan Cron)说，当局在法庭上提交的一张照片显示，一名官员用背部为人们开门。克朗说，马丁走进国会大厦时，警察没有设置路障，也没有人告诉人们不允许他们进入大楼。
“他认为这没问题，”克朗说，并补充说他的客户在国会大厦里呆了不到10分钟，没有犯任何暴力行为。“他不知道国会大厦的政策和程序是什么，”克朗说。"他从未去过那里。"
从表面上看，当暴徒冲进大楼时，官员们似乎站在一边的照片可能有利于暴徒的说法。在1月6日之后的几天里，这些图像助长了警方故意袖手旁观的谣言，但它们没有得到证实。
专家告诫不要下结论。
洛约拉法学院教授劳里·莱文森说:“在声称警察受到人群欢迎时，背景非常重要。”。“他们试图控制一个快速发展、困难重重、具有潜在爆炸性的局面。所以我觉得光说‘警官没有阻截我’是不够的"
当局表示，密苏里州斯普林菲尔德的迈克尔·奎克声称，他和他的兄弟从一扇开着的窗户爬进来时，他不知道自己不被允许进入国会大厦。他认为警察让人们进入，尽管看到警察穿着防暴装备。
代表迈克尔和斯蒂芬·奎克的律师迪·瓦普勒说，他目前没有证据证明官员们让人们进入大楼的说法，但他指出，他还有数千份检察官的文件有待审查。
“如果这个案子被审判，证据将是，当我的客户进入时，有相当多的官员站在周围，他们没有试图阻止流沙，”瓦普勒说，并补充说，他的客户没有在国会大厦内实施任何暴力。
但这一论点对雅各布·单斯利(Jacob Chansley)不起作用，他是亚利桑那州的一名男子，在暴乱中戴着面部彩绘，戴着带角的毛茸茸的帽子，手持长矛。
汉斯莱的律师说，一名官员告诉他的委托人，“这栋建筑是你的”，他是第三批进入国会大厦的暴徒之一。
两个月前，法官罗伊斯·兰伯特(Royce Lamberth)拒绝了将汉斯莱从监狱中释放出来的请求，他说不清楚是谁发表的评论，并得出结论认为，汉斯莱无法证明警察挥手让他进入大楼，他引用了一段视频，法官说这段视频证明菲尼克斯人是大楼里第一批暴徒之一。法官指出，当汉斯莱从一扇门进入国会大厦时，暴徒正从破碎的窗户爬进来。
单斯利的律师艾伯特·沃特金斯(Albert Watkins)仍然坚称，他的当事人是大楼里第三波暴徒中的一员，并表示，那些相信特朗普的每一句话并相信选举被盗的暴徒认为他们被允许进入大楼是合法的，这不应让公众感到震惊。“这是他们心中所想的，”沃特金斯说。
总之，约书亚·布莱克声称他帮助了国会大厦的官员。
布莱克说，在遇到他声称在国会大厦门口受到保护的官员之前，警察用塑料弹丸击中了他的脸颊，当时他试图阻止另一名官员在国会大厦外被其他暴徒“靴子踩”。但是检察官说，监控录像没有描述地面上的一名军官，也没有显示布莱克试图帮助一名军官。
布莱克的律师克拉克·弗莱克金格二世没有回复寻求置评的电话和电子邮件。
Capitol rioters make questionable claims about police
PHOENIX -- Joshua Matthew Black said in aYouTubevideo that he was protecting the officer at the U.S. Capitol who had been pepper sprayed and fallen to the ground as the crowd rushed the building entrance on Jan. 6.
“Let him out, he’s done," Black claimed to have told rioters.
But federal prosecutors say surveillance footage doesn’t back up Black’s account. They said he acknowledged that he wanted to get the officer out of the way — because the cop was blocking his path inside.
At least a dozen of the 400 people charged so far in the Jan. 6 insurrection have made dubious claims about their encounters with officers at the Capitol. The most frequent argument is that they can't be guilty of anything, because police stood by and welcomed them inside, even though the mob pushed past police barriers, sprayed chemical irritants and smashed windows as chaos enveloped the government complex.
The January melee to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory was instigated by a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who have professed their love of law enforcement and derided the mass police overhaul protests that shook the nation last year following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
But they quickly turned on police in one violent encounter after another.
“We backed you guys in the summer,” one protester screamed at three officers cornered against a door by dozens of men screaming for them to get out of their way. “When the whole country hated you, we had your back!”
The Capitol Police didn't plan for a riot. They were badly outnumbered and it took hours for reinforcements to arrive — a massive failure that is now under investigation. Throughout the insurrection, police officers were injured, mocked, ridiculed and threatened. One Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, died after the riot.
Officers who spoke to The Associated Press said police had to decide on their own how to fight them off. There was no direction or plan and they were told not to fire on the crowd, they said. One cop ran from one side of the building to another, fighting hand-to-hand against rioters. Another decided to respond to any calls of officers in distress and spent three hours helping cops who had been immobilized by bear spray or other chemicals.
Three officers were able to handcuff one rioter. But a crowd swarmed the group and took the arrested man away with the handcuffs still on.
Still, some rioters claim police just gave up and told them that the building was now theirs. And a few — including one accused of trying to pull off an officer’s gas mask in a bid to expose the officer to bear spray — have claimed to be protecting police.
Matthew Martin, an employee for a defense contractor from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who has acknowledged being inside the building, claimed police were opening doors for people as they walked into the Capitol.
Dan Cron, Martin’s attorney, said a photo filed in court by authorities shows an officer using his back to hold a door open for people. No police barriers were in place when Martin walked into the Capitol area, nor was there anyone telling people they weren’t allowed in the building, Cron said.
“He thought that was OK,” Cron said, adding that his client was inside the Capitol for less than 10 minutes and didn’t commit any violence. “He doesn’t know what the policies and procedures at the Capitol are,” Cron said. “He had never been there.”
On the surface, images taken of officers who appear to step aside as the mob stormed the building could be beneficial to the rioters' claims. In the days after Jan. 6, those images fueled rumors that police had stood by on purpose, but they have not been substantiated.
Experts caution against drawing conclusions.
“The context will be very important in claiming officers welcomed in a crowd,” said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson. “They were trying to control a fast-developing, difficult, potentially explosive situation. So I don’t think it’s enough to say, ‘The officer didn’t tackle me.’”
Authorities say Michael Quick of Springfield, Missouri, claimed that he didn’t know at the time that he wasn’t allowed in the Capitol when he and his brother climbed in through an open window. He believed police were letting people in, despite seeing officers in riot gear.
Attorney Dee Wampler, who represents Michael and Stephen Quick, said he doesn’t currently have proof for the claim the officers were letting people into the building, but he pointed out that he has thousands of documents from prosecutors still left to review.
“If this case was tried, the evidence would be that there was a fairly large number of officers that were standing around when my clients entered, and they didn’t try to stop the Quicks,” Wampler said, adding that his clients didn’t commit any violence inside the Capitol.
But the argument did not work for Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who sported face paint, a furry hat with horns and carried a spear during the riot.
Chansley's lawyer said an officer told his client that “the building is yours” and that he was among the third wave of rioters entering the Capitol.
In rejecting a request two months ago to free Chansley from jail, Judge Royce Lamberth said it wasn’t clear who made the comment and concluded Chansley was unable to prove that officers waved him into the building, citing a video that the judge said proves that the Phoenix man was among the first wave of rioters in the building. The judge noted that rioters were crawling in through broken windows when Chansley entered the Capitol through a door.
Chansley's attorney, Albert Watkins, still insists that his client was in the third wave of rioters in the building and said it shouldn’t shock the public that rioters who were hanging on to Trump’s every word and believed the election was stolen legitimately believed they were allowed in the building. “It’s what’s in their hearts and minds,” Watkins said.
In all, Joshua Black made two claims that he helped officers at the Capitol.
Before encountering the officer he claimed to have protected at a Capitol doorway, Black said, police shot him in the cheek with a plastic projectile as he tried to keep another officer from being “bootstomped” by other rioters while outside the Capitol. But prosecutors say surveillance video doesn’t depict an officer on the ground, nor is Black shown trying to help an officer.
Black’s attorney, Clark Fleckinger II, didn’t return a phone call and email seeking comment.
