4.7 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2022
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Host Reed Galen is joined by former Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone. They discuss Fanone’s path to service, his harrowing personal account of January 6, 2021, the aftermath of January 6th and his post-insurrection public appearances, and whether or not the case built by the House Select Committee on January 6th has been effective in proving its case to the American people. Plus, how has policing changed over the course of Fanone’s twenty-year career and what remains to be improved. For more on this, be sure to pick up Michael Fanone's new book, Hold the Line, wherever fine books are sold. If you’d like to connect with The Lincoln Project, send an email to [email protected].
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0:00.0 | Hey, everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I've asked you before and I want to ask you again, join the union dot us. |
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0:39.6 | Welcome back to the Lincoln project of your host Reed Gaillet today. I'm joined by Michael Phenop former metropolitan police department officer where he served for 20 years. |
0:49.6 | Over the course of those two decades, he first briefly served as a patrol officer before spending the majority of his career as a vice investigator in various small mission units were he participated in over 2000 arrests for violent crimes and narcotics trafficking and served as a special task force officer for the FBI, ATF and the DEA and earn more than three dozen commendations for his work. |
1:09.6 | Mike came to national attention for his service in bravery during the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol and his new book hold the line tells the story of that day, but I think also much more than I want to get into and is available wherever find books are sold. |
1:23.6 | He currently serves as a law enforcement analyst for CNN is a security consultant and a firearms instructor today is coming to us from Washington DC. Mike, welcome to the show. |
1:32.6 | Yeah, thank you for having me. So Mike, before we get started on the book or anything else, I have to ask what is your favorite Sturgel Simpson song? |
1:41.6 | I mean, that changes from day to day, but right now, Mark Curie and Retro grade is resonating with me, particularly. |
1:51.6 | So you mentioned Sturgel just pages into the book and I'm a huge fan and you're lucky enough to have gotten a meet in which I'm also very jealous of. |
1:58.6 | But Sturgel was my soundtrack as I read your book and not a bad one on the bunch. |
2:04.6 | So Mike, I want to talk about obviously your career as a law enforcement officer because I think aside from your role in, you know, January 6th, where you were that day, I think also, you know, the first third of the book is really about your experiences as a street cop in Washington DC. |
2:22.6 | A place that has a pretty good reputation for violence, drugs, all that. |
2:27.6 | So tell us a little bit about, you know, you work different jobs and then worked at the Capitol as a Capitol police officer before you went to the MPD. |
2:35.6 | But give us a sense of when you started on the force, how you saw the people that you were serving because I think that's a big part of the book is that this is about is much about service as it is about anything else. |
2:48.6 | Well, when I first came out into patrol, the first thing that I realized was nothing in the academy and actually the two academies that I attended, you mentioned I went to US Capitol Police prior to joining MPD. |
3:03.6 | So I attended Fletsy, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and then MPD's Academy, neither of those academies prepared me for the reality of, I guess, for lack of a better term modern day policing. |
3:15.6 | You know, Washington DC in the early 2000s was still reeling from the drug wars. |
3:24.6 | It was very violent. We saw, you know, 200 plus homicides in the first couple of years that I was on the department. Unfortunately, we seem to have returned to that in recent years. |
3:36.6 | But my philosophy was, I would say just like any other cop, I was in adrenaline junkie. I liked running and gutting, so to speak. |
3:50.6 | And I wanted to work in proactive units almost immediately. My goal was to get out of patrol as quickly as humanly possible and get into, you know, what our department refers to is special mission units, which are, you know, your vice units, your, you know, narcotics trafficking focused, violent criminal focused units. |
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