A Philly police contractor was let go for allegedly attacking cops during Jan. 6 Capitol riot

A contract nurse who worked in the detention unit at Philadelphia Police Headquarters was dismissed from his duties this week after his supervisors learned he’d been charged with attacking officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in Washington.

James Wayne Maryanski — a 52-year-old registered nurse from Boyertown — was barred from the building at 400 N. Broad St. on Wednesday after he showed his bosses the ankle monitor he is required to wear as part of his pretrial release and told them about the case pending against him in Washington, a police spokesperson said.

Federal prosecutors in the district have accused Maryanski of chasing after retreating officers as they fled from a mob of thousands of angry supporters of former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. Video from the scene, since shared on social media, appears to show him spraying chemical irritant in the faces of several cops.

“He self-reported,” Philadelphia police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said Thursday of Maryanski’s dismissal from his duties at the department’s headquarters building. “He was told to leave.”

Maryanski is at least the 87th Pennsylvania resident charged in the historic assault, which caused nearly $3 million in damage to the Capitol building, left scores of officers injured, and threatened the peaceful transition of presidential power.

In all, the Justice Department has prosecuted more than 1,100 people and continues to file new cases — like Maryanski’s — more than two years after the attack.

Until this week, Maryanski regularly worked out of Philadelphia’s Police Headquarters as a nurse under a contract the department holds with YesCare, a Tennessee-based correctional health care company.

The role brought him to the headquarters’ detention unit roughly once a month, Gripp said.

Representatives for YesCare did not immediately respond to questions Friday on whether Maryanski remained employed with the company, despite his dismissal from his role with the Philadelphia police. Maryanski and his attorney, Louis Buscio, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But according to federal court filings in Washington, the charges against him have been pending for nearly a month.

Authorities say that Maryanski was among the first wave of rioters to breach police barriers outside the Capitol building as members of congress met in joint session to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

“The hundreds of officers at the front of the inauguration stage were outnumbered and under continuous assault from the thousands of rioters directly in front of them, as well as members of the mob who had climbed onto the scaffolding above and to the side of them, many of whom were hurling projectiles,” the FBI wrote in an affidavit submitted in conjunction with Maryanski’s arrest.

Video captured from the scene showed Maryanski — dressed in a black hooded jacket with the words “Break Up Big Tech” scrawled on a piece of duct tape attached to one arm — at the front of that crowd, grabbing bike rack barriers and lunging at police, according to the affidavit.

As police lines collapsed and the officers defending the building retreated, Maryanski allegedly pursued the fleeing cops, shooting several officers in the face with an unidentified chemical irritant.

He later joined one of the most intensely violent melees of the riot — the fight between officers and police for control of the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace tunnel. As one rioter smashed a glass window with a baseball bat seeking entry into the building, Maryanski stood nearby filming, according to the affidavit.

He later followed the attacker through the smashed window, where he and other rioters ransacked the room on the other side — dumping belongings across the floor and passing shards of smashed furniture out the broken window and back to the crowds outside so they could be used as weapons to attack police, prosecutors said.

Though authorities eventually succeeded in quelling the insurrection, Maryanski appeared unrepentant in his posts on social media.

“Lol,” he posted to Facebook the day after. “I love how you liberals are gloating now. You’ll all be begging us right-wing extremists soon enough to storm that Capitol for real. Yesterday was a dry run.”

He was arraigned last week in federal court in Washington on counts including impeding officers with a deadly weapon, interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds — the most serious of which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence should he be convicted.