DC police officer on riot: ‘I didn’t get sprayed with bear spray’ in Iraq

A military veteran and Washington police officer who defended the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6 riots compared his experience to his service in Iraq in an interview with The New York Times, sharing that while there were some similarities, he was not “sprayed with bear spray” in Iraq.

Sgt. Tyrone Gross, who served as an Army specialist in Iraq, said holding off the pro-Trump mob was “somewhat similar to being in Iraq,” and conceded that “the people who were at the Capitol that day were passionate,” much like the Iraqis he encountered.

“Except, I didn’t get sprayed with bear spray by people there, and I didn’t meet with as much resistance with people in Iraq as I did by the people at the Capitol,” he told the newspaper.

Gross told the Times that he encountered a number of veterans while trying to defend the Capitol, noting the first person he encountered said he was a veteran and “had a right” to storm the building.

He told the Times that he thought the people there thought they were “doing something right.”

“The people at the Capitol actually believed they were doing something right, even though we know it wasn’t right and people lost their lives,” he said. “It was mind-blowing, to be honest with you.”

Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer killed in the riot, was himself a New Jersey Air National Guard veteran who served in Iraq. House and Senate leaders voted in January to approve Sicknick laying in honor in the Capitol rotunda.

CNN reported in January that there were a disproportionate number of people with military ties arrested in the Capitol riot.

The riot had led police units around the country, as well as the military, to look into whether members took part in the attack on the Capitol, according to a report by NBC last month. 

The Pentagon has also launched a probe into whether the Department of Defense has taken adequate steps to keep white supremacists out of the armed forces.