Congressional candidate Rhonda Foxx says she was the victim in 2018 arrest case

An arrest stemming from an altercation with a neighbor from 2018 has become an issue for a candidate who is running for the 6^th Congressional District.

Rhonda Foxx, a Democratic candidate in the 6^th
Congressional District, says that the resurfacing of details from her 2018
arrest resulting from an altercation between her and her neighbor has had a
negative impact on her campaign.

Foxx is one of five candidates in the Democratic primary for
the seat, which takes place on March 3. In 2018, she was working as a staffer
for US Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) and living on the seventh floor of a Washington,
DC apartment building.

On a late September afternoon, as she waited for the
elevator to take her small, white, poodle mix downstairs, she was asked by one
of her neighbors, who was already riding the elevator with her own large dog
and two other people, to take the next ride or take the stairs because she
didn’t want their dogs to get in a fight.

Foxx decided to take the stairs, as she recounted in an
interview with Triad City Beat,
and then approached her neighbor in the courtyard to tell her that
residents with aggressive dogs are supposed to take the back elevator, as outlined
in apartment rules.

An affidavit in support of an arrest warrant in addition to
a complaint filed by Foxx’s neighbor, Christina McGlosson, alleges that Foxx
became aggressive and choked McGlosson, and called her a “racist b*tch” and a
“ghetto b*tch” and that she would “kill her.”

Two months after the incident, in December, Foxx was
arrested for simple assault and threats to do bodily harm. Foxx spent 12 hours
in jail, and the charges were dropped five months later in May.

Since then, Foxx has used the incident to talk about
criminal justice reform in her political campaign. In January, she penned an
article on Medium in which she states that she “went to jail for a crime [she]
did not commit” and that it “changed [her] life.”

While a police report included in the affidavit depicts Foxx
as the aggressor, an interview with Foxx along with additional documents
obtained by TCB tell a different story.

After confronting McGlosson in the courtyard, Foxx said that
McGlosson became agitated and said that “it’s because of your people, that’s
why the apartment smells like weed.”

Foxx said it was McGlosson who became physically violent,
and not the other way around.

“She hit me in the eye,” Foxx said. “When I was hit, I
absolutely lost it.”

McGlosson could not be reached for this article.

Foxx said she became angry but that she never said the
things listed in the affidavit.

She also said the two witnesses involved, who Foxx
identified as McGlosson’s sister and brother-in-law, stood by and watched
rather than interfered, which contradicts the account in the affidavit
supporting Foxx’s arrest warrant.

Moesha Foster, the security guard on duty, told Allison Muller, an investigator working for Foxx’s attorney that “Ms. McGlosson appeared to be the aggressor in the situation” and “that Ms. McGlosson would not calm down and was verbally aggressive,” according to a memo obtained by TCB.

Foster also said that “Ms. McGlosson continually and angrily
interjected in while she was trying to speak with Ms. Foxx about the situation,”
according Muller’s memo.

Foster, who reviewed security footage from the incident,
also said, according to Muller’s report, that “the video showed Ms. Foxx and
Ms. McGlosson close to each other, but she did not observe either touch the
other.”

Foster also recalled that by the time she arrived on the scene,
that “neither Ms. Foxx or Ms. McGlosson appeared injured.”

Foster addtionally noted that the two witnesses “were
sitting on top of Ms. McGlosson’s dog to prevent it from being aggressive” when
she arrived on the scene. The two witnesses are not named in the police report
included in the affidavit.

In the affidavit, David Gargac, a detective with the
Metropolitan Police Department also acknowledged that “the footage does not
show where any grabbing, striking, or punching, was initiated by either [Foxx]
or [McGlosson].” Gargac said the video showed that “appears to launch at
[McGlosson]” but that the “video frequently skips as it is motion activated.”

Based on the video evidence prosecutors had to acknowledge
that there was no basis for the charge against Foxx, according to documentation
obtained by TCB.

One of Foxx’s former lawyers wrote in an email to Foxx that
the lead prosecutor, Greg Kimak, “acknowledged that there was no
choking/strangling, and that the threat charge had no apparent basis.”

Kimak, who was reached by phone on Friday, declined to comment
on the incident.

The email from Foxx’s lawyer goes on to say that Kimak
talked to McGlosson and that “she backed away from those claims, but still had
[Foxx] hit/touched her in some way.”

On Jan. 10, 2019, the prosecutor offered Foxx a deferred
prosecution agreement, which included a requirement that she serve 32 hours of
community service and agree to a “stay away” order from McGlosson.

“To me it’s like, you hit me,” Foxx said in an interview with TCB. “Why would I do 30 hours of community service for something I did not do? So, I refused to do that.”

After turning down the agreement, the charges against Foxx were
dropped in May. She said that the timeline of the entire incident should be
enough to make people question McGlosson’s account of the situation.

“You don’t choke someone out and make them fear for their
lives, and then come for an arrest warrant two months later,” Foxx said.
“Whoever files the charges first is perceived as the victim.”

Now, Foxx said she’s working to raise awareness for other
people who have been unjustly jailed for crimes they did not commit.

“This makes me really upset,” she said. “It is a re-victimization
of something that obviously makes no sense.

“The realities are this shouldn’t define my team or my
campaign,” she added.

Foxx said that she plans to host a townhall on criminal
justice in the near future and that she is dedicated to working on issues of
criminal justice reform if elected.

“My hope would be, the damage is done, and people are going
to believe what they believe,” Foxx said. “But one, who are we as a community
that this is our level of politics? And two, our system is broken.”