Hockey stick guy

Written by

Ophelia Benson

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Rachel Maddow showed this clip last night; she said she had literally had nightmares about it.

He lifts the hockey stick over his head and slams it down on the cop, over and over.

He’s in jail pending a court appearance.

A Michigan man, allegedly seen attacking police with a hockey stick during riots at the U.S. Capitol, was arrested on Thursday after FBI agents got an unwitting assist from the suspect’s Facebook-posting father, officials said.

Michael Joseph Foy, 29, was picked up in the Detroit suburb of Wixom about 6:30 a.m., according to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

He made a brief appearance in court about seven hours later, and was ordered to remain in jail until his next hearing on Monday afternoon, authorities said.

One minute it’s the glorious revolution, next minute you’re spending a nasty weekend in jail.

The FBI said it has video that shows Foy targeting members of the Metropolitan Police Department with the hockey stick.

“Foy begins striking a group of Metropolitan Police Officer assisting in the protection of the U.S. Capitol who had been knocked down and dragged into the crowd of rioters,” authorities said in an affidavit.

“This attack continues for approximately 16 seconds until Foy is knocked down by another rioter. At that time, Foy circles back through the crowd, lowers his hood, which reveals a clear image of his face.”

His lily-white face.

Comments

4 responses to “Hockey stick guy”

  1. zubanel Avatar
    zubanel

    How was this guy not shot?

  2. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    How was this guy not shot?

    Of course, you know the answer:

    His lily-white face

  3. What a Maroon Avatar
    What a Maroon

    Did they get crutch guy yet?

  4. Dave Ricks Avatar
    Dave Ricks

    zubanel asked,

    How was this guy not shot?

    A former U.S. Capitol Police officer wrote an essay on that question in The Washington Post here, with this title and subtitle:

    Our training didn’t cover when to shoot at a mob storming the Capitol

    Policing a riot involves walls of officers. This riot left individual officers facing an awful choice they should not have had to make.

    I can read the essay without signing in, so maybe others can too, but I’ll post these paragraphs in case others can’t see it:

    Shoot/Don’t shoot. Shoot/Don’t shoot. I keep muttering that impossible choice as I watch scenes of violence inside the U.S. Capitol. I know this question was racing through the minds of the Capitol Police officers we saw surrounded by the mob on Jan. 6. Shoot/Don’t shoot. Some of them will be asking themselves that question for the rest of their lives.

    It’s easy to say that if you were there, you would have shot at a certain point; it appears there was only one incident of deadly force by a police officer, remarkable when you see the full scope of what was happening. But the reality is that every instinct of those police officers was to not shoot, and for a number of reasons. Left alone or in small groups because of leaders’ lack of preparation for this event, each of these officers had to ask themselves the most horrible of questions: What is happening behind me? When do I kill 16 of the 1,000 people in front of me with the ammunition I have in my Glock 22 because they are pushing past me? (You won’t be able to reload.) What is my point of no return? I know I’m not a coward, but can I be a monster? And then this question: If I survive this, can I live with this?

    I don’t pretend to have answers, but I do know that this can never happen again. It shouldn’t have happened at all. The whole point of security planning, of layered defenses and depth, is that it never gets to the point of what we all saw at the Capitol. If your security plan relies on the heroism of individual officers, then you haven’t written a security plan. You’ve written suicide notes for other people.

    What would we be talking about now if officers on the perimeter had decided to shoot because they correctly perceived the threat as imminent but not in a way that any policy would cover? How many people would have died? Would it have changed anything? We let far too much rest on the decisions of individual police officers endlessly reviewing an awful choice: Shoot/Don’t shoot.

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