Man who played Star Wars music at National Guard members reaches settlement

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When Sam O’Hara first spotted National Guard members on patrol in Washington, he quickly decided how he would protest.

O’Hara walked up, followed them and used his iPhone to broadcast Darth Vader’s theme music.

“It’s almost Pavlovian. The sound immediately makes me think of tyranny,” he recalled recently.

The music – John Williams’s “The Imperial March” – lent Star Wars-inspired satire to a view expressed by many other D.C. residents: Deploying federal troops for crime control amounted to federal overreach. O’Hara repeated the stunt twice more. Passersby laughed, he said, as did a few Guard members.

But on a Thursday evening last fall, a Guard member from Ohio didn’t seem amused. He called D.C. police, several of whom arrived and detained O’Hara in handcuffs for 15 to 20 minutes, O’Hara said. Afterward, O’Hara and the ACLU of DC sued, alleging his First Amendment rights were violated.

On Friday, the ACLU announced it had reached a financial agreement with the D.C. government and four of its officers, resolving part of the case.

“I’m pleased that the D.C. police recognize their part in violating my rights,” O’Hara, 35, told The Post in an interview afterward.

Still pending is the part of his lawsuit directed at the Ohio National Guard member. He is being represented by lawyers at the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office who in April filed a motion to dismiss their part in the case. The office cited several factors, according to court filings, including that the Guard member didn’t cause the termination of O’Hara’s protest and is entitled to qualified immunity because O’Hara didn’t plausibly allege the Guard member had violated any clearly established law.

The complaint, the attorneys wrote, sought to hold him liable “for simply requesting police assistance while performing a federal support mission as an on-duty guardsman.” “When followed, distracted, and harassed by plaintiff,” they wrote, he “did the very thing the mission contemplated: he called local law enforcement to conduct their own investigation and to address the matter as they saw fit.”

The ACLU has filed court papers responding to the motion to dismiss.

“We have vigorously opposed that and will continue to fight to hold everyone accountable who was involved in the violation of Mr. O’Hara’s core First Amendment right,” said Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of DC.

Representatives at the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office and D.C. Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

D.C. police said in a statement after the settlement that the department “recognizes the importance of upholding First Amendment rights of individuals to peacefully express their views and is dedicated to facilitating lawful demonstrations while maintaining public safety and order.”

The department declined to discuss its earlier decision to refer the matter to its Internal Affairs department, saying it does not comment on internal investigations or personnel matters.

Under the settlement, the D.C. Attorney General’s Office admitted no wrongdoing, according to the ACLU. Neither the ACLU nor O’Hara disclosed the financial terms. “I will say that I’m pleased and it was significant and meaningful,” O’Hara said.

He works in the hospitality industry and said the Guard presence has hurt that sector. “Having the National Guard standing out in front of your beautiful restaurant is not really attractive for people coming into the restaurant,” he said.

His protests began Aug. 29 on a sunny afternoon in the Dupont Circle neighborhood when O’Hara took his dog, a Dachshund rescue mutt named Lincoln, for a walk. He spotted two uniformed Guard members near the area’s central fountain. And in his head, the longtime Star Wars fan heard the Darth Vader theme music.

O’Hara turned on the tune and followed them, repeating the protest twice over the next two weeks. “Loud enough for people in the vicinity to hear,” his lawsuit would later state, “but not at a blaring level.”

His friends enjoyed the protests, as did neighbors on his street. “May the force be with you,” they’d say.

O’Hara said he would only play his music if the Guard members were on standard patrol, not if they were actively supporting law enforcement.

On the evening of Sept. 11, he’d just gotten off work and was near 14th and R streets NW when he saw four members of the Ohio National Guard. Firing up “The Imperial March,” O’Hara began to follow. One of them, a sergeant, turned around and spoke to O’Hara.

“Hey, man, if you’re going to keep following us, we can contact Metro PD and they can come handle you if that’s what you want to do,” he said, according to a recording O’Hara was making.

“Is that what you want to do?” he asked, his head nodding although O’Hara’s response couldn’t be heard. “Okay.”

O’Hara said he never responded but continued playing the music and recording.

O’Hara kept following the three others as the group passed a long rack of red Capital Bikeshare bikes, a tattoo shop and an Indian restaurant, the video shows.

Soon, he was approached by a D.C. police officer, as conversation turned to possible harassment and whether O’Hara was blocking a business entrance – both of which he said he wasn’t doing. “I’m practicing a peaceful right to protest,” O’Hara said, according to the video, before adding a warning: “You’ll make a mistake and get sued.”

When the Guard members started to walk away, and O’Hara started to follow them, the officer told him to “stand there.”

Three more D.C. police officers arrived, spoke with O’Hara, detained him and placed him in handcuffs. A male officer eventually removed the cuffs as O’Hara raised his voice, according to video of the encounter by another person posted on TikTok.

“Am I free to go? Answer the question,” he sternly asked a female officer. “Am I free to go?”

One of the officers said yes.

O’Hara began walking away and turned to the two officers.

“Okay, f— yourselves,” he said.

“Yes, I said it, and I still mean it‚” O’Hara said over email, explaining that he had been held in “painfully tight handcuffs” by officers who in his view hadn’t given straight answers and abused their authority. “I’m not asking anyone to applaud the language I used. I’m saying it was an honest reaction.”

The actions of the D.C. officers, and those of the Guard members, also amounted to a wrongful detention, a violation of O’Hara’s Fourth Amendment rights, his lawsuit alleges.

O’Hara said it was embarrassing to be standing on a public street in handcuffs and that the restraints left marks. But the worse part, he said, was being halted from exercising a fundamental right.

“It’s just the idea that at any point someone can stop me from practicing my right to protest,” he said.

O’Hara continues his protests, often using a portable JBL speaker. He posts them on his TikTok channel.

Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of “The Yoga Store Murder.”