A member of last year’s Trump-incited Capitol mob who participated in the vicious assault of then-D.C. officer Michael Fanone was sentenced on Thursday by federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson to seven and a half years in prison.
Seemingly, that’s nearly the maximum available sentence under the charge of assaulting police to which the rioter — a Tennessee man named Albuquerque Cosper Head — pleaded guilty. Fanone, who left the force after the Capitol assault, was in court on Thursday for Head’s sentencing, where he criticized the defendant. He told Jackson to “show him the same mercy that he showed me on January 6… which is none,” eventually adding: “I would trade all of this attention to return to policing. But I can’t do that.” Head’s role in the assault on Fanone included dragging the officer further into the chaos and restraining him while other members of the mob attacked. As riot participants who began aiding Fanone moved the then-officer towards safety, Head still tried to get at him.
During that fateful afternoon, Fanone was repeatedly tased on the back of his neck, and among other injuries, he suffered a heart attack and concussion. “Head only let go when Officer Fanone reacted with enough force to free himself from Head’s grip,” prosecutors noted regarding initial portions of the incident. As reported here, Head has a history of nearly four dozen arrests and multiple domestic violence convictions. Under questioning, he also misrepresented the nature of his actions at the Capitol, claiming to have been essentially boxed in by the crowd pouring into a particular tunnel. “This claim is flatly contradicted by video evidence depicting his willful and persistent participation in some of the most barbaric violence on January 6,” prosecutors said. He also fought other officers using some of their stolen equipment.
Head’s case featured two co-defendants, including one, Iowa man Kyle Young, whose teenage son was with him during the chaos. Young pleaded guilty to an assault charge and was sentenced to jail-time totaling just under Head’s stint in prison. Another individual who assaulted Fanone, Capitol rioter Danny Rodriguez, infamously cried under questioning, maligning himself — and facing pretrial detention after using a stun gun on the then-incapacitated officer, whose life was threatened. The detail that someone in the crowd shouted about killing Fanone with his own gun has widely circulated. The attack on Fanone in which Head participated took place in the Lower West Terrace tunnel area at the Capitol, where particularly violent fighting unfolded throughout the afternoon. The incident took place about an hour after members of the riot crowd first breached the building elsewhere on the grounds.
“People need to understand that they can’t do this, or anything like this, again. They can’t try to force their will on the American people once the American people have already spoken at the ballot box. That’s the opposite of democracy, it’s tyranny. And the threat to democracy, the dark shadow of tyranny, unfortunately, has not gone away,” Jackson said during Head’s sentencing in D.C. In Arizona, armed extremists have set up patrols outside of drop boxes for mail-in ballots, providing a troubling portent of the possibilities should Republicans win or something not go their way.
