Bodycam footage allegedly shows Thomas Sibick (circled) taking officer Michael Fanone’s police radio and badge while others in the mob beat and tased the officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots. The world watched in horror Jan. 6 as Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone was dragged down Capitol steps into a mob of rioters, then tased, beaten with flagpoles and stripped of his gear. Now a Buffalo man has been charged with assaulting the officer, and has admitted to taking Fanone’s badge and radio, burying the badge in his Buffalo backyard, and then lying about it. Thomas Sibick has been charged with obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, assaulting or impeding officers and taking a thing of value by force or intimidation, according to papers unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice Friday.  Sibick, who was identified via the officer’s body cam footage, insists the badge came off while he was trying to help the officer, and that he used the radio to call for help by pressing its emergency button, according to the filing. He said he feared for his life and the life of the officer when he heard someone shout, “Get his gun and kill him.” In an initial Jan. 27 interview with FBI agents, Sibick denied taking the badge and radio. In early February, he admitted taking the equipment but said he dropped the badge and radio and left. Later, he told agents that he carried the items with him before dropping them in a trash can on Constitution Avenue, according to court papers. Eventually, Sibick said he had planned to turn the items over to the FBI the day after he returned to Buffalo, but was afraid of being arrested. Instead, he said, he threw them in a dumpster in the back alleyway of the Lenox Hotel at 140 North St., according to the filing. But after an agent told Sibick that cameras at the hotel would be checked to confirm his claim, he confessed that he had buried the badge in his backyard. Sibick purchased a metal detector, dug up the muddy badge and gave it in a plastic bag to federal agents, papers said.

via buffalonews: Buffalo man charged in attack on Capitol officer, says he buried cop’s badge in backyard