Police Practices and Police Misconduct

Can the Government Punish You for Mocking It? In this episode, host Amber Taylor, Strategic Communications Director at ACLU-D.C., sits down with our client Sam O’Hara to discuss his detention by D.C. police after he recorded National Guard members patrolling Washington, D.C., while playing The Imperial March from Star Wars. Sam shares what happened that day, why he believes his rights were violated, and what his lawsuit, O’Hara v. Beck, could mean for free speech and the right to challenge authority.

The Council of the District of Columbia today unanimously overrode a veto by Mayor Muriel Bowser, passing legislation to require the Metropolitan Police Department officers to document identifying information for all law enforcement officers present at the scene of an arrest.

The recent militarization of D.C. is a reminder of how quickly government power can expand. Our guide explains what to do if you’re stopped by police or troops.

No matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly and due process.

Kekai Watanabe was brutally attacked in a prison fight and his tailbone was broken. For months, prison staff at the federal prison in Hawai‘i where he was detained denied his requests for hospital care, providing him instead with over-the-counter pain medication. Mr. Watanabe sued, seeking damages for his months of pain and suffering. Doing so is his only way to hold accountable the officials who ignored his repeated requests for care. But the government now argues that he has no right to sue a federal prison official. Although state and local officers who violate the Constitution in this same way could be sued for it, there's no federal law specifically creating a right to sue federal officers for constitutional violations, and so the government argues such suits cannot proceed. Using this type of reasoning, the Supreme Court in recent years has made it extremely difficult to sue federal officers. This rule creates a major gap in constitutional enforcement, especially here in D.C., where there is a huge federal law enforcement presence. Because of the Supreme Court's hostility toward claims against federal officers, for instance, our case seeking damages for the massive, unprovoked assault on peaceful civil rights demonstrators at Lafayette Square in the summer of 2020 is proceeding on very different terms against the federal officers than against the local officers involved in the same incident: whereas against the D.C. police we have been allowed to proceed as a class action and will be able to seek punitive damages, we could proceed only on behalf of a handful of individuals (not a class) for constitutional violations by the U.S. Park Police, Secret Service, and other federal defendants like former Attorney General William Barr, and we cannot seek punitive damages for the federal offers' violations. Together with the National ACLU and the ACLU of Hawai‘i, we filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Mr. Watanabe at the Supreme Court. Even the Court’s restrictive recent decisions about suing federal officers acknowledge that Congress, in the Westfall Act of 1988, preserved the ability to bring some federal officer claims. When Congress legislates about a well-established legal concept, courts presume that Congress intended to incorporate that established meaning. At the time of the Westfall Act’s passage, courts permitted claims—like Mr. Watanabe’s—alleging unconstitutionally deficient prison medical care by federal officers. Therefore, to respect the instructions of Congress, the courts should continue to permit such claims today. A contrary result would be disastrous, and not just for Mr. Watanabe. One of the government’s main arguments here is that a federal-officer suit cannot proceed because federal prisons have an internal grievance process, known as the “ARP.” When appeals courts have applied this ahistorical limitation on what federal-officer suits are available, the results have been grotesque. For instance, the Eleventh Circuit recently relied on the ARP to reject a constitutional claim for fatally inadequate medical treatment of Hepatitis C in prison “even though [the plaintiff’s] estate could not use the ARP after his death.” Carrin v. Strong, 182 F.4th 1351, 1354 (11th Cir. 2026). The Third Circuit relied on the ARP to reject a constitutional claim for the failure to treat diabetic blisters that ultimately required the amputation of the plaintiff’s toe, even though the “effectiveness” of the ARP was “dubious.” Muniz v. United States, 149 F.4th 256, 258, 264 (3d Cir. 2025). And the Eleventh Circuit relied on the ARP in rejecting a constitutional claim for failure to treat an incarcerated plaintiff’s “severe but ultimately non-lethal physical injuries” even though “the district court found that he was denied access to the [ARP].” Johnson v. Terry, 119 F.4th 840, 858-60 (11th Cir. 2024). These outcomes are both unfair and contrary to what Congress directed when it acted in 1988. The Supreme Court will hear argument in this case November 9.

Among other things, ACLU-D.C. urges the Council to put pressure on MPD to implement all recommendations from the Office of the D.C. Auditor (Auditor) and Office of Police Complaints (OPC); pass legislation prohibiting all District government entities, including all entities designated as law enforcement, from collaborating with any federal agency for the purpose of carrying out immigration enforcement; and taking a more compassionate approach to concerns about youth misbehavior, by investing in proven crime prevention strategies, rather than punitive ones, like the youth curfew.

Young people in D.C. deserve policies that consider their wellbeing, that truly address the challenges they and their communities are facing, and that de-center policing and carceral-centric strategies. D.C.’s Black youth, in particular, deserve to not only be heard, but be protected like anybody else; not further criminalized in the place they call home.

Our homes are our sanctuaries, which is why, absent rare exceptions, the Fourth Amendment requires government officials to get a neutral judge’s permission through a warrant before entering. This basic principle governs every police department in the country. But now, the Department of Homeland Security has authorized its agents, including ICE, to ignore it. In a secret memo, made public by a whistleblower, DHS purported to authorize its officers to forcibly enter any home if a DHS official—not an independent judge—concludes that an individual inside is subject to a final order of removal. Under this policy, DHS can enter homes and make arrests on its own say-so—even if the target of the final removal order has rights to seek further review or resides with people who are not subject to deportation. Last December, DHS entered Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi’s home without a warrant, acting on an administrative form alone. Agents arrested him and detained him for 23 days until a federal judge ordered his release. Operating under the same sort of authority, DHS used a battering ram to enter the home of Teyana and Garrison Gibson Brown a few weeks later and then stormed into Noe Alfredo Salguero’s home after that. DHS officials have engaged in similar conduct around the country. On April 2, we joined a coalition of legal organizations to file a lawsuit challenging DHS’s policy of authorizing agents to enter homes without judicially signed warrants.