Four years ago, Officer Daniel Hodges was called upon to defend the Capitol against a pro-Trump mob and wound up being pinned by the throng in a doorway of the building, in one of the most searing images of the violence that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Monday, Officer Hodges is expected to be on duty again — this time with a different job: ensuring that President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration goes off safely.
In an interview with The New York Times, Officer Hodges said he had come to grips with the idea that his professional duty now required him to protect a man whose supporters beat him, kicked him and tried to gouge his eyes out on Jan. 6.
“It’s something I knew would happen since Nov. 5, so I’ve had a lot of time to deal with it,” he said. “But that’s the thing about democracy — you can’t just be in favor of it when your guy wins. You have to be OK with it when the other guy wins.”
Officer Hodges, who has served for a decade in the Metropolitan Police Department, was thrust into the public spotlight a little more than six months after Jan. 6 when he was one of four officers injured during the Capitol attack to testify at the first public hearing of the House select committee that investigated the riot.
During his testimony, he described how the mob descended into “terrorism” that day, booing and mocking the police as rioters hoisted Trump flags. And he watched the videos of himself, showing him trying to escape being crushed by the crowd in a doorway of the Lower West Terrace tunnel, his helmet askew, his face contorted in pain.