Internet vigilantes falsely link ex-officer to teens’ attack

SILVER SPRING, Md. – John Damskey’s nightmare began with his wife getting emails from strangers telling her she should be ashamed of her husband, a retired police officer. Their phones wouldn’t stop ringing with calls from unfamiliar numbers. Some even called his 74-year-old mother.

Baffled by the barrage of hate last Thursday, Damskey plugged his name into the internet and made a horrifying discovery: Mobs of Twitter users were falsely accusing him of being the bicyclist on a Maryland trail who accosted three young adults posting flyers protesting the death of George Floyd.

Millions of users have viewed a video of last Monday’s encounter on the Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.

Damskey, 53, was one of at least two men who were falsely accused by internet vigilantes who posted their photos and personal information on Twitter before police on Friday arrested and charged another man, 60-year-old Anthony Brennan III, with assaulting the three protest supporters.

Damskey, who served as a Montgomery County police officer for nearly 30 years before retiring in 2016, described the experience as surreal and terrifying.

“I’ve got a wife who is in tears. My mom is scared to death,” he told the Associated Press Monday in his first interview about his ordeal. “It’s sad. It’s scary. It’s something that I don’t ever want to go through again.”

Brennan, a Kensington, Maryland, resident, issued a statement through his lawyers in which he said he was “sick with remorse for the pain and fear I caused the victims on the trail.”

Damskey said he saw tweets that endangered his son, Michael, a police officer, and other relatives who have served as police officers and firefighters.

“I don’t know who has seen it and who hasn’t, but my reputation is shot. Once they see something like this, there’s always going to be that question,” he said.