Christian Miles, a freelance video editor and former U.S. Navy submariner, was arrested Monday near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., and charged with violating a federal obscenity law, he told the Guardian. Miles said he plans to contest the charge.
The arrest came after Miles berated a group of Oklahoma state troopers who were guarding the reflecting pool. Miles has made it a personal project in recent months to “document the creeping police state” since Trump’s federal takeover of policing in Washington, D.C., by filming himself confronting and often berating federal troops and officers around the city, he told the Guardian.
Miles posted an edited video of his encounter with the Oklahoma troopers on YouTube. In an email to the Guardian, Miles noted the irony that one of the troopers he argued with before his arrest told him the U.S. was obviously a free society “because you can be out here and you can video all you want to … Go to China, they’d run over you in a tank in Red Square.” According to Miles, he was arrested seven minutes later for using obscene language as he protested the security crackdown at the reflecting pool.
The charge falls under section 2.34 (a) (2) of the Code of Federal Regulations, which prohibits disorderly conduct by someone who uses “language, an utterance, or gesture, or engages in a display or act that is obscene, physically threatening or menacing, or done in a manner that is likely to inflict injury or incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
The arrest comes as the reflecting pool has been plagued by problems since the Trump administration spent $14.2 million renovating the body of water in front of the Lincoln Memorial, turning it “American flag” blue in time for the U.S.’s 250th birthday next month. The pool has since been beset with algae blooms and peeling polyurethane liner. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the pool had been slashed with a knife.
Earlier this week, Trump said on social media that six people had been arrested “for the damage they did to our country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool.” So far, the actual charges filed against people arrested at or near the reflecting pool have not included doing any damage at all, according to the Guardian.
MSI previously reported that a former Olympian was arrested after touching peeling paint at the reflecting pool, and that Trump blamed vandalism for the algae and peeling paint at the $14.2 million renovation.