You can tell the Capitol Hill siege is still very raw for Harry Dunn. The Capitol police officer joined CNN’s Don Lemon after a House resolution passed last night awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police officers who put their lives on the line on January 6th. CNN writes that “he and his fellow Black officers are still grappling with their harrowing experience on January 6, when they endured insurrectionists hurling racial slurs at them during a physical assault on the iconic building.” 

Dunn choked back tears as he recounted the suffering he says he and his colleagues are still dealing with.

“The Black officer struggle was different as in, like I said, we fought against not just people that were, that hated what we represented, but they hate our skin color also. That’s just a fact and they used those words to prove that, they showed that they hated us and they hated our skin color.”
Dunn says the rioters not only tried to physically hurt them, but they also used their words as weapons.
“Once I had time to sit down and put it all together, it was just so overwhelming: that here we are giving so much and putting our lives on the line to protect democracy and keep it and we’re being called racial slurs, traitors, and any just weapon that these people could use because they were upset about something.”
“I didn’t wake up that morning and want to be called a n*****, plain and simple,” he told Lemon. “I didn’t ask to be called that, so I didn’t bring race into it. I just wanted to do my job.”
Watch his interview below.

ABC News also spoke with Dunn about January 6th. Watch that above.