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The District of Columbia has agreed to a settlement with a resident who sued the city and four police officers after he was detained last year for following National Guard troops while playing music from the “Star Wars” franchise.
Sam O’Hara alleged in a complaint in October that four Metropolitan Police Department officers violated his First Amendment rights when they handcuffed him as he was protesting the deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital.
His attorneys notified a federal judge in a filing on Friday that a partial settlement had been reached in the case and that he would move to dismiss his claims against those defendants once the payment was received.
A spokesperson for the D.C. branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing O’Hara, declined to specify the settlement amount due to privacy concerns, saying only that it was a “significant amount” he was “pleased with.”
“The government’s efforts to silence me ultimately backfired and brought more attention to the unjust deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.,” O’Hara said in a statement. “This settlement serves as a reminder that constitutional freedoms are worth defending, especially when those in power would prefer we stay quiet.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
The settlement does not affect claims against an Ohio National Guard member. That defendant’s motion to dismiss the claims against him “remains live,” according to the filing.
O’Hara has racked up millions of views on social media on clips of him trailing guard members with a speaker blaring the “The Imperial March,” the theme music for Darth Vader.
The complaint stated that one guard member was “not amused by this satire” and threatened to call D.C. police officers if he continued, during an incident in mid-September.
O’Hara claimed officers came to the scene after he refused to stop and he was “tightly handcuffed” for 15 to 20 minutes in what he described in court filing as a display of excessive force.
“Our right to speech grants us the freedom to criticize the government. Government officials don’t have to like it, but they can’t punish someone for their speech,” said Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU of D.C., in a statement.
“This episode is another demonstration of the folly of Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to patrol D.C. We don’t need them here, intimidating residents and violating their constitutional rights.”
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