Retired New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster leaves court in Washington on Thursday
(Picture: AP)A former NYPD officer has been jailed for 10 years after assaulting a policeman during the Capitol riots in Washington.
Thomas Webster, who formerly served as a police officer in New York City, struck the police officer with a flagpole and tackled him during the violence on January 6 last year, by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
Webster was among thousands of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
He was found guilty of the assault in May, but on Thursday was sentenced to a decade behind bars - the longest sentence yet handed down in a case related to the riots.
A federal jury in the District of Columbia previously rejected arguments that he was acting in self-defence when he assaulted the Washington police officer.
He has now been sentenced to “concurrent terms of 120 months”, according to the online portal page of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
“I too wish you hadn’t come to Washington, D.C. I too wish you had stayed at home in New York...that you had not come out to the Capitol that day, because all of us would be far better off. Not just you...your family...the country,” US District Judge Amit Mehta was quoted as saying by CBS News.
Webster was also sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 17 years and six months while the court’s probation department recommended a 10-year prison sentence. The judge was not bound by those recommendations.
The Justice Department says it has arrested more than 860 people for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol, including more than 260 who were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
Webster’s lawyer, while arguing for a shorter sentence, said his client had been under “an extraordinary amount of influence” from Trump’s election falsehoods.
