She has chemical burn scars from defending the Capitol - and one minor infraction in 24 years
A 24-year veteran of the US Capitol Police is suing the department, alleging she was passed over for promotion because she is a Black woman.
The inspector - who helped defend the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection and suffered chemical burns to her face, neck and head in the process - filed the complaint on September 16 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
According to the filing, the officer has commanded some of the department's most crucial specialty units over her two-decade career, including the Civil Disturbance Unit, the Investigation Division, and the Less-Lethal Teams. She has held supervisory roles across four of the USCP's six bureaus, completed the FBI National Academy, and received the Congressional Gold Medal as part of the collective award to January 6 responders in 2022.
The complaint centres on two sets of promotions announced on April 13, 2026.
For a Deputy Chief position overseeing the Operational Services Bureau - home to USCP's SWAT team, bomb squad, hazmat unit, and K-9 unit - the filing alleges the chief selected a white male who had never held any supervisory role in that bureau. The complaint says his entire supervisory tenure had been within the Uniformed Services Bureau, managing the personnel who guard congressional buildings and screen visitors.
The filing alleges the plaintiff had outperformed the selectee at every prior promotion - reaching the ranks of sergeant, lieutenant, and captain ahead of him each time - and was ranked above him on the inspector promotion list.
Then came the three Assistant Chief appointments.
According to the complaint, the chief bypassed the department's longstanding practice of holding competitive selections for Assistant Chief - a process the filing says had been in place for more than 20 years - and instead made direct, non-competitive appointments. All four of the newly promoted leaders, the filing alleges, were white.
The complaint says the non-competitive process was used to avoid selecting three qualified Black female candidates: the plaintiff, a deputy chief who led the department's largest bureau by headcount, and another deputy chief who had served as Acting Assistant Chief for over a year and had been named the department's 2025 Executive of the Year.
One of the appointees, the filing alleges, had a disciplinary record that included "maintaining an improper romantic relation with a subordinate." The complaint states, on information and belief, that she was transferred to another unit as a result. Another appointee, according to the complaint, had "a terrible discipline record, including drunk driving while on duty and overtime pay fraud."
The plaintiff, the filing states, has only one minor infraction - for cursing - in 24 years of service.
The complaint also points to what it describes as a broader pattern of decisions dismantling the department's diversity infrastructure. Among its allegations: the chief disbanded the Office of Equity and Inclusion in August 2025 - the unit responsible for helping the department cultivate workforce diversity, including in its leadership ranks - and ordered all its materials collected and destroyed across the agency. According to the filing, when the plaintiff asked about the removal, the chief told her his instructions were that the materials would be taken "overnight, when no one would be present."
The complaint also alleges a wider institutional history of tolerating discriminatory conduct. It cites a November 2025 jury verdict that found the USCP's K-9 training program had discriminated against a female officer, alleging that training staff falsified her records to make her performance appear worse than her male colleagues and modified testing to help white male handlers pass. According to the filing, none of the training staff were disciplined or removed after the verdict.
The filing further references a 2023 proceeding before the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights in which a deputy chief was found to have discriminated against a Black male sergeant by removing him from his training post to, in the complaint's words, "appease a group of racist white K9 officers." That deputy chief, the complaint alleges, was promoted to Assistant Chief within a month of the final decision against the department.
As a result of the chief's April 2026 selections, the complaint states, there are currently no Black officials in the Office of the Chief at all.
The lawsuit brings three counts under the Congressional Accountability Act - the federal statute that extends workplace anti-discrimination protections to employees of the legislative branch, including the Capitol Police. The first count targets the Deputy Chief selection. The second and third challenge the failure to consider the plaintiff for two separate Assistant Chief positions. Each count alleges discrimination based on race, sex, or both in combination - what the law calls intersectional discrimination, meaning she alleges she was passed over specifically because she is a Black woman, not just because of race or sex alone.
The plaintiff is seeking a jury trial, declaratory and injunctive relief, monetary and compensatory damages, and attorneys' fees.
For HR leaders, the case is a pointed example of the legal risk that sits inside non-competitive promotion processes - the complaint's core theory is that bypassing open competition enabled biased outcomes that a transparent process would have prevented.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings or rulings on the merits.
