US Military Veteran Sues Idaho National Guard After Being Violently Detained At Her Home In DC

Before the second coming of the Trump administration, National Guard troops weren’t serving as the president’s personal street bullies. They weren’t running up on people and threatening them with arrest for dipping their hands into the reflecting pool, all because President Donald Trump needs an abundance of scapegoats to cover up his own incompetence. Black men weren’t being shot down in civilian streets by military personnel. And for that matter, troops weren’t being shot and killed by terrorists outside of the battlefield because the president deployed them to cities unlawfully, according to a multitude of federal judges who have blocked said deployments.

In Washington, D.C., National Guard troops entered the residence of a military veteran, tossed her to the ground and zip-tied her hands behind her back. Now, she’s suing the government.

According to NPR, back in May, Anna King, a retired U.S. Army captain who served in Iraq and earned both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star,  was sitting on a bench outside her D.C. home when three members of the Idaho National Guard entered her front gate, confronted her and pushed her to the ground, and tied her hands behind her back with zip ties. The May 8 incident was captured on a Ring security camera.

“Get away from me right now,” King can be heard telling the three men as they approached her. “You have absolutely no authority to detain me.” She can also be heard shouting, “Get off of me!” as the troops wrestled her to the ground and tightened the zip ties on her hands.

Now, according to the National Guard, King was suspected of assaulting a different Guard member two days earlier. However, her attorneys called that allegation “baseless” in a federal tort claim filed on July 29 against the Idaho National Guard, which seeks $3 million in damages from what the filing describes as an assault that led to lasting and serious injuries, including injuries to her wrist from the tight zip ties and required surgery, as well as post-traumatic symptoms. Her lawyers, who are employed by the private law firm Levy Firestone Muse and are working alongside the ACLU of the District of Columbia, also said King has not been charged with any crimes related to an assault on Guard members.

In fact, her attorneys have offered an alternative motive for the incident.

From NPR:

King’s attorneys say that they believe she was approached by the guard because she has been a vocal critic of their deployment in the city for months, hanging large signs outside her house with messages like “Occupation: Troops Out” and “National Guard Stop Being So Embarrassing.”

“This is a really troubling example of what happens when you rely on National Guard members to do your policing. National Guard members aren’t trained for this work. This isn’t what they do on a day-to-day basis, they are being asked to do something that they are not equipped to do,” says Michael Perloff, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of DC who is representing King.

Perloff also represented Sam O’Hara, another D.C. resident who was arrested after he followed several Ohio National Guard members while playing the Darth Vader theme song from Star Wars in protest last year. He sued over the arrest and settled with the city.

National Guard members do not have the authority to arrest people, but they can detain someone until an actual police officer arrives. In King’s case, the Metropolitan Police were called in, according to the Joint Task Force in D.C.  Perloff confirmed that King was detained for one night and that she is now being charged with assaulting the Guard members who detained her.

Well, isn’t that interesting? So, King wasn’t charged for allegedly assaulting officers in a prior incident that brought Guard members to her door, but she is now being charged with assaulting those Guard members after filing her lawsuit, nearly three months after her detainment.

Last week, the ACLU posted a video that includes footage from the incident, and King speaking about her experience and how it affected her.

“Governors, what are your National Guardsmen doing?” she asked in the video. “Are you OK with them patrolling U.S. cities, attacking U.S. citizens?”

King went on to describe the events of that day and the damage it caused to her mentally, physically, and emotionally.

“Being a combat veteran, having served in war to then be abused and assaulted by National Guardsmen at home has deeply decreased my ability to sleep again. I’m having nightmares daily,” she said.

King also said that regardless of how traumatized she is following her detainment, she won’t stop protesting against the presence of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.

“I’m not going to stop sitting outside of my home on my bench, and I’m not going to stop bringing awareness to the fact that armed National Guardsmen in any city in the U.S. is uncalled for,” she said.

Here’s another friendly reminder that while Trump claimed he deployed the National Guard in D.C. due to out-of-control crime, the government’s own data shows crime in D.C. was at a 30-year-low when the president launched his anti-crime task force last August.

Our president lies to the people in order to justify wielding military power against them just because he has that power to wield. This is also what fascist authoritarians do.

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