DC Cops Sued After Arresting A Man For Playing Darth Vader’s Theme Music Near Federal Troops

from the evil-empire-calls-for-backup dept

To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O’Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their Trump-enabled interloping. As he followed the troops through the neighborhood, O’Hara engaged in protected expression — that being the recording of government employees… with a little musical accompaniment.

This is from O’Hara’s lawsuit [PDF] filed against the DC Metro police officers who eventually arrested him, as written by the ACLU lawyers (Michael Perloff, Scott Michelman) representing him:

In the Star Wars franchise, The Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader or other dark forces enter a scene or succeed in their dastardly plans. It is also the soundtrack of Sam O’Hara’s protest against the National Guard deployment in D.C.

Those troops arrived in the District in August 2025, after President Trump decided to flood D.C. neighborhoods with National Guard members from around the country. A few weeks passed, and yet the troops remained. Given the roughly 200-year-old tradition of civilian law enforcement in the United States, Mr. O’Hara was deeply concerned about the normalization of troops patrolling D.C. neighborhoods. And so, he began protesting the Guard members’ presence by walking several feet behind them when he saw them in the community. Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring. Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.

O’Hara did not impede the troops’ movement. He did not attempt to close the several-foot gap between him and them. He just followed behind them, playing a theme song the Trump administration likely would have approved of. In fact, we already know it considers itself to be the Empire. After all, just weeks ago it posted a video that portrayed immigration enforcement efforts as Darth Vader “cleansing” a spaceship of rebel soldiers. (Skip to 0:52 if you’re impatient.)

If the government itself thinks it’s Darth Vader and the rest of us are just rebel scum, those participating in Trump’s invasion probably shouldn’t be so bothered someone’s willing to memorialize their unwanted presence with what I assume is the song they hear in their heads every time they start chasing a day laborer across a Home Deport parking lot.

The out-of-state National Guard wasn’t impressed, however. Instead, the person who should have been the adult in the room decided he was going to tattle:

Ohio National Guard member Sgt. Devon Beck was not amused by this satire. On September 11, 2025, […] In less than two minutes, Sgt. Beck turned around and threatened to call D.C. police officers to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he persisted. Mr. O’Hara continued recording and playing the music. Sgt. Beck contacted the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Defendant MPD Officers Brown, Campbell, Reyes-Benigno, and Lopez Martinez came to the scene and, in essence, did what Sgt. Beck had threatened, putting Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs and preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest.

Adding to idiocy of this interaction is that O’Hara had done the same thing on three previous occasions. Those times he was either greeted with laughter and smiles from the National Guard troops or ignored entirely. It was only Sgt. Devon Beck who couldn’t handle this alleged “harassment,” which was so far short of every definition of the word that the MPD officers had to make up a bunch of bullshit to justify their detention of O’Hara.

Defendant Officer Campbell immediately walked up to Mr. O’Hara, without conducting any investigation. He said to Mr. O’Hara accusatorily, “[i]f you’re harassing them”—at which point Mr. O’Hara interrupted to ask for Defendant Campbell’s badge number. After providing that information, Defendant Campbell said, “if you are assaulting them,” which again prompted Mr. O’Hara to interrupt, this time to say that he was not assaulting the Guard members but rather peacefully protesting.

Mr. O’Hara was correct. He was not harassing or assaulting the Guard members. He was, in fact, standing several feet away, recording them and playing the March. Nor had Mr. O’Hara assaulted or harassed the Guard members at any point during his interaction with them.

Officer Campbell also accused Mr. O’Hara of standing in front of the entrance to a store when, in fact, Mr. O’Hara was standing to the side of the entrance and not blocking anyone’s passage.

In response to Mr. O’Hara’s statements that he was engaged in protest, Officer Campbell said, “That’s not a protest. You better define protest. This isn’t a protest. You are not protesting.”

That is some dumb shit. The MPD is not under any obligation to respond to calls by the National Guard. The National Guard deployment definitely isn’t in the clear, legally-speaking. And since it’s not engaged in law enforcement efforts (because it definitely can’t do that legally), the MPD is not its backup.

But cops are cops. And this group of cops just kept copping and coping. The dumb stuff said by Officer Campbell was repeated by other officers until the whole thing ended with O’Hara handcuffed and taken to the station. Eventually he was released when people who actually knew better realized they didn’t actually have any reason to keep holding him. And if they didn’t have that, they certainly didn’t have any reason to detain/handcuff him in the first place.

It’s already terrible enough that this administration has, in essence, declared war on cities the president doesn’t like. Using local police power to aid and abet the incremental roll-out of martial law isn’t helping.

The ACLU’s summary of the complaint is on point, albeit perhaps too confident in its assumption that Trump (and his loyal lapdog of a Supreme Court) haven’t already turned us all into residents of a mostly constructed Death Star:

The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.

The Supreme Court has already made it clear that suing federal officers (which I imagine will be expanded to cover federalized National Guard units) is a non-starter. And the cops who showed up to perform the bogus arrest will likely be forgiven for being too professionally ignorant to comprehend the finer points of “not making shit up to excuse your actions” when they’re obviously unjustified. But there’s always a chance this actually ends in something comparable to justice. Let’s hope — for the sake of DC and the country itself — that’s the case here.

Filed Under: dc metro police, evil empire, free speech, lawsuit, mass deportation, michael perloff, mpd, national guard, retaliation, scott michelman, trump administration