Gregory Yetman, the Helmetta resident who participated in the Jan. 6 rioting while a sergeant in the New Jersey Army National Guard, was sentenced Monday to 30 months in prison.
Yetman, 47, who picked up a chemical spray launcher and fired it at police officers that day, pleaded guilty in April of this year to assaulting, resisting or impeding police with physical contact at the U.S. Capitol that day
Yetman will have to serve 18 months of supervised release after prison, and pay $2,000 in restitution for damage at the Capitol, court records show.
He’s been in custody in Washington, D.C. since December 2023, following his arrest a month before in New Jersey.
A federal prosecutor argued Yetman deserved 45 months behind bars. His lawyer argued for a year in prison, and no greater than 17 months.
In a presentence report, the prosecutor, Craig Estes, argued Yetman’s actions on Jan. 6 and during his arrest – when he fled into the woods behind his home – show his disregard for his own background and training.
“Despite his oath to the Constitution, and his years of experience working in law enforcement, Yetman did not hesitate to pick up a canister of OC spray and turn it on his fellow police officers. Yetman saw that the officers he sprayed were surrounded and under assault by dozens of other rioters — but he targeted them just the same,” Estes wrote.
The FBI first interviewed Yetman two weeks after Jan. 6, 2021, after receiving a tip from the Army.
He admitted to being at the Capitol that day and said despite witnessing people breaking windows and a police officer being dragged into the mob, he tried to help people who’d been sprayed with chemical irritants.
He also said, “he supports law enforcement and that anyone entering the Capitol or assaulting officers should be prosecuted,” authorities said. He would go on to serve more than a year in the Army National Guard.
Federal investigators, though, later learned they he was one of the people spraying chemicals.
When the FBI arrived at his home on Nov. 8, 2023, Yetman dropped a knife and cell phone and ran into the woods. He surrendered to local police two days later.
Yetman has no prior criminal history, Estes wrote, but “the seriousness of his conduct on January 6, and in particular his willingness — as a then-active military police officer — to use a dangerous weapon against fellow police officers that even he recognized were just ‘there do to their job’ defending the U.S. Capitol from the riotous mob weigh heavily in favor of incarceration here.”
And, despite his military police background, “Yetman chose to flee from lawful arrest in November 2023 and to remain in hiding for several days which necessitated an extended manhunt that consumed substantial police resources and disrupted the local community with street closures and school shelter-in-place order — consequences that were, given his training and experience as a military police officer, all reasonably foreseeable.”
The same month of his arrest, Yetman’s family created an online fundraiser that said he fled because he feared “being falsely imprisoned,” and complained: “This has been a nightmare for all of us involved and so many other families that are dealing with this J6 nonsense.”
Yetman failed to disclose the account to federal authorities, and that also warrants a “significant period of incarceration,” Estes wrote. The account had over $42,000 as of July 15.
In his presentence report, Yetman’s lawyer, Nicholas D. Smith, played up his client’s 14 years of military service and described him as a gainfully employed, decent citizen who has a job waiting for him when he returns from prison.
Smith characterized Yetman’s crime as a “12 second offense,” since that is how long he sprayed officers that day.
“Regrettably … Yetman got swept up in the madness of the crowd that descended on the Capitol that day. Like too many others, he engaged in outrageous conduct there, using a canister of pepper spray to shower a noxious aerosol over nearby law enforcement officers,” Smith wrote.
Yetman’s offense, Smith conceded, “was reckless and deplorable,” he argued: “one cannot assume from the act alone that he intended to inflict bodily injury on officers who were not in fact injured.
“Yetman deeply regrets his shameful conduct, for which he accepted responsibility without delay. At sentencing he will apologize with feeling to the law enforcement officers affected by his offense,” Smith wrote.
The report includes 20 pages of letters from Yetman’s friends and family members and several Army buddies, who all say he is an honorable, helping person who gives to his community.
One was a retired Westampton police officer who served with Yetman in the military, another was a Pennsylvania couple who described how Yetman helped them and saved their camping equipment when a storm swept through a multi-day music festival in Virginia.
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