Anna King was sitting on a bench one afternoon outside her home on a busy street in Washington, D.C., scrolling on her phone when three National Guard members entered her front gate, confronted her and pushed her to the ground, tying her hands behind her back with zip ties.
The incident, which happened on May 8, was caught on a Ring security camera.
"Get away from me right now," King, a retired U.S. Army captain who served in Iraq and earned both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, can be heard telling the three male guard members in the video as they approach her on the bench. "You have absolutely no authority to detain me."
As she tries to make her way to her front steps to go inside, the three Idaho National Guard members grab King and wrestle her to the ground. You can hear King yelling "Get off of me!" and coughing, while two of the troops tighten the zip ties on her hands.
Now, the ACLU of the District of Columbia and the private law firm Levy Firestone Muse have filed a federal tort claim against the Idaho National Guard on King's behalf, seeking $3 million in damages from what they describe as an assault that led to lasting and serious injuries.
The National Guard says King was approached by the troops because she was suspected of assaulting a guard member two days earlier, something her attorneys called "baseless" in their filing. They say no charges around such an incident have been filed against King.
The three guardsmen who detained King are among nearly 5,000 National Guard members deployed to D.C. as part of President Trump's anti-crime task force. It was launched last August, despite a 30-year-low in crime. All of the troops in the task force have been deputized as special police by the U.S. Marshals Service and are carrying handguns — which is rare for a domestic National Guard deployment.
They do not have arresting powers, but they can detain individuals until an officer arrives.
NPR reached out to the Idaho National Guard, which said it was aware of the filing but declined to comment because of ongoing litigation.
"The Idaho National Guard is committed to the professionalism and accountability of its service members and takes all allegations of misconduct seriously," it said in a statement, while referring further questions to the joint task force in D.C. as the "allegations arise from activities associated with a federally directed mission."
The joint task force said it is aware of the claim, and reiterated the claim that King assaulted a guard member two days earlier.
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.
After King was detained by the guard members, the Metropolitan Police were called in, according to the Joint Task Force in D.C. Perloff confirmed that, saying that King was then detained for a night, and is now being charged with assaulting the guard members who detained her.
Perloff says King sustained serious injuries to her wrist from the tight zip ties and required surgery, but is also suffering from post-traumatic symptoms from the incident.
In a video the ACLU posted online on King's behalf, she talks about how it's all affected her.
"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," King says.
She says she will continue to protest the presence of the National Guard in the city.
"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 says.
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