The trauma from the riot still affects her and her colleagues.
 | By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
This week, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will release its final report, and it may feel like a kind of end — a time to take stock of what we've learned from two years of investigations and recriminations and together move forward from the attack. But for Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was caught in the violence that day, this moment feels quite different. |
You may remember Edwards from her riveting testimony before the committee in June. She talks about it, for the first time, in a guest essay for Times Opinion, describing how her heart started racing and her body shook as she waited outside the hearing room before her appearance and had to listen to a recording of the crowd storming the Capitol. Even more than a year after the riot, she was still working through the trauma. "Only by talking to each other, seeking out help and support from our fellow officers, will we find peace — and that could take years," she writes. |
Edwards knows better than most the toll that day took on her colleagues. For months now, she has been counseling fellow officers through a peer support group, listening to their stories, helping them process their grief and find closure. In her guest essay, she describes their resilience — and how moved she has been to see them lay flowers on the memorials to their fallen colleagues, or even just to hear their laughter echoing through the halls of the Capitol. A small act of defiance, as if to say: No, we will not be defeated by this. |
Over the coming days, we'll cover what the report contains, and put it in historical context, as a document that scholars will be returning to for generations to come. But for now, before journalists start dissecting the content of the report, I can recommend Edwards's beautiful essay — a reminder that, for some, the scars of Jan. 6 linger, even now, almost two years after the attack against our democracy impinged upon us all. |
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