A former New York police officer has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for his role in the January 6 Capitol riots.
Ex-cop Thomas Webster assaulted officers outside the Capitol complex during the insurrection in early 2021, per a report by ABC News.
His sentence marks the longest prison term yet to be handed to a defendant for participating in the riots.
Webster, 56, was found guilty of six charges in May this year. These included assaulting D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Noah Rathburn, who testified during the trial.
Per Rathburn's testimony and officer body camera footage released by the Department of Justice, Webster took an active role in instigating violence during the riots.
In the footage, he can be seen wearing what appears to be a bulletproof vest and waving a Marine Corps flag as he pushes to the front of the crowd and yells at Rathburn.
After shouting at the officer to "take [his] s*** off", Webster broke apart the police perimeter with a flagpole and then tackled Rathburn, pulling off his gas mask and choking him with the chin strap. The officer hit him in the face in self-defense.
Webster claimed that Rathburn started the fight and that he only grabbed his gas mask to defend himself. Despite this, he was convicted on six charges.
These included assaulting, resisting, or impeding an officer using a weapon; engaging in physical violence in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; entering and remaining in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon' and civil disorder.
Alongside the 10 years of imprisonment handed down by a federal judge, Webster was also ordered to serve three years of supervised probation and to pay $2,060 in restitution.
The Florida, New York former officer served in the Marine Corps from 1985 to 1989, before serving as an NYPD officer from 1991 to 2011.
U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves condemned Webster in a statement on Thursday, saying: "As a former Marine and retired police officer, Thomas Webster could readily see the growing dangers to law enforcement when he and other members of the mob targeted the Capitol on January 6th."
"He chose to escalate the situation, brutally going on the attack. Today's sentence holds him accountable for his repeated attacks of an officer that day," Graves added.
