A Minnesota woman beaten by police in the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the U.S. Capitol has filed a $2 million civil suit for being repeatedly struck in the head and slammed into a concrete wall on Jan. 6, 2021.
Victoria Charity White, 42, of Rochester, Minnesota, alleges at least two Metropolitan Police Department officers unlawfully used “deadly force” by repeatedly striking her head and face with steel riot batons and fists at about 4 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.
The complaint—filed on March 27 by Washington attorney Paul Kamenar—names MPD Commander Jason Bagshaw and MPD Officer Neil McAllister, and alleges other unnamed officers took part in the beatings.
It alleges violations of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S. Code § 1983. It is an amended version of a suit Ms. White filed representing herself in January.
“The defendants willfully and unlawfully seized plaintiff by means of objectively unreasonable, excessive, and indeed, deadly force that shocks the conscience, thereby unreasonably restraining and depriving plaintiff of her freedom and inflicting physical and mental harm and anguish,” read the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington.
“Because of the senseless and unlawful beating she received at the hands of the defendants and the other MPD officers, Ms. White suffered great physical, traumatic, and emotional harm that day and continues to suffer to this day, particularly the traumatic and emotional harm,” Mr. Kamenar wrote in the lawsuit.
Mr. Bagshaw, the suit alleges: “Repeatedly struck an unarmed and defenseless White about her head, face, shoulders, and upper body with a metal baton and his fists.”
He is being sued in his professional and personal capacity, the lawsuit stated.
Mr. McAllister “along with defendant Bagshaw and other police officers, physically assaulted the plaintiff,” the suit said.
Mr. McAllister is also being sued in his professional and personal capacity.
According to the suit, video evidence shows Mr. McAllister “slamming Ms. White up against the concrete tunnel wall, whereupon, inexplicably, his bodycam is shut off for some 30 seconds.”
The department declined to comment on the suit.
Acceptable force with this type of subject would involve “low-level physical tactics to gain control and cooperation,” with techniques that could involve pain but would generally not inflect injury, the MPD policy cited in the suit states.
The suit outlines the beating first documented in The Epoch Times on Dec. 23, 2021, after Ms. White’s then-attorney Joseph McBride secured the release of previously sealed security video from the tunnel.
The newspaper’s analysis of the CCTV video showed Ms. White was struck by police 39 times in a little over four minutes.
A series of videos show Ms. White suffering rapid fire hits, punches to the head, a baton poked at her head, and being doused with pepper spray.
Bodycam video released in 2023 revealed more information on the beating, including a bystander in the tunnel who begged police to stop striking Ms. White.
At 4:09 p.m., the man said: “No, no, no, please! Please don’t beat her,” according to the video. Two minutes later, as police shouted at him to “move it, keep walking!” the man replied, “No! You’re going to kill her!”
At the time of the first lawsuit, Mr. McBride said a special prosecutor should be named to investigate the beating.
None of the officers allegedly involved in Ms. White’s case has been disciplined or faced criminal charges.
“That is somebody who’s not only acting with authority but is acting with license,” Mr. McBride said, referring to Mr. Bagshaw, then an MPD lieutenant.
“That is somebody who is acting because he has no fear that he’s going to be reprimanded for his actions. Do I think that’s criminal? There is no doubt in my mind that what that man did was criminal.”
Mr. McBride filed suit on Ms. White’s behalf on Jan. 5, 2022, but she withdrew the suit in November 2022 to concentrate on defending herself against criminal charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice for her time at the U.S. Capitol.
That initial lawsuit identified seven police officers who allegedly took part in the beating.
Ms. White was indicted on Jan. 26, 2022, on four counts, including felony civil disorder.
She accepted a plea deal in August 2023 and was found guilty of the civil disorder charge.
Prosecutors sought a four-month jail term, but U.S. District Judge John D. Bates on Nov. 22, 2023, sentenced Ms. White to eight days of intermittent jail time.
Ms. White was featured in the July 2022 Epoch Times documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6.”
She said the beatings on Jan. 6 gave her flashbacks to a decade of domestic abuse.
“I’ve had those with my ex, where I'd be awake doing something as simple as laundry, and all of a sudden, I’m there, being choked to death and beat or punched,” she said.
“This was the feeling of all that. It was like those blows, but now in the tunnel.”
