NYPD Vet Watched Inauguration From Inside An Alabama Prison

J6er Sara Carpenter Made Sure She Got a Front Row Seat

When U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg sentenced Sara Carpenter, then 54, to 22 months in a federal prison for her involvement in the events of January 6, 2021, he told her, “This won’t be a walk in the park.” The scorn of friends and family aggravated the punishment, but, says Sara, “God had me the whole way.” So protected, she never gave up hope.

That hope was reinforced on Election Day, November 5, 2024. Locked down that night to prevent disorder, Sara did not get to see the election results revealed. On the morning of January 20, 2025, she made sure she got to watch the inauguration, planting herself early in front of the communal TV at her Alabama prison. A few allies joined her, including fellow J6er Audrey Southard.

It had been a long 11 months since Sara self reported at a Brooklyn detention facility. From Brooklyn, she was shipped to Oklahoma and there put in solitary confinement. “Am I in hell?” she found herself asking. “Thank God,” she adds, “I was armed with the Psalms.”

From Oklahoma Sara was dispatched to the Aliceville Federal Correction Institute in Alabama. Having a cellmate who was a convicted murderer with a serious grudge against white people, Sara did her best to stay out of trouble. Most inmates ignored her, but a few gravitated towards Sara knowing why she had been imprisoned.

As to the “why” of the imprisonment, I tell Sara’s story in my book Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6. Coming from a family of police officers—father, uncle, several cousins—I found her plight particularly compelling.

At 21, Sara had an unexpected encounter with destiny. When her car broke down in lower Manhattan, two undercover cops emerged out of nowhere and rescued her from a knife-wielding thug. That incident alerted the Queens native to the potential nobility of a police career. Although her real passion was painting, Sara signed up for the NYPD. Nine years later, she put in for retirement. Says Sara, “I did not like who I was becoming.” Her last day was scheduled to be September 12, 2001.

September 11 intervened. Although off duty that day, Sara headed reflexively to Ground Zero where she would spend the next month. Toward the end of that month, having seen far too much, she found herself unable to stop crying. The NYPD had little choice but to put her on medical leave. In the confused and confusing years that followed, Sara got pregnant by a man not ready to raise a child.

In referring to Boasberg’s “walk in the park” remark, Sara told me last week, “I had taken much more painful walks in the park near my home to try to heal from the loss and pain that we endured after 9/11.”

Broke and depressed, Sara thought seriously of making an appointment with Planned Parenthood. Always open to both sides of an argument, she turned to Mother Teresa for an alternative opinion. The three-word quote she found saved her son’s life and her own soul. Said Mother Teresa, “Abortion is terrorism.” Sara had seen terrorism enough for a lifetime. She would not contribute to its spread. To compare January 6 to 9/11 as Kamala Harris and others have done, is, in Sara’s informed opinion, blasphemous.

As late as January 5, Sara had no plans to go to DC on January 6, That evening, some grade school pals—among her few political allies in a hostile city—called Sara urging her to come on down. Used to strange hours while with the NYPD, Sara figured she could leave in the early morning hours, grab a few hours of shut-eye in her car, attend the rally, and be back home that night to make sure her 16-year-old son was ready for school the next day.

Although not good in crowds, Sara joined thousand of others on the march to the Capitol. “It was kids. It was dogs. It was wonderful,” she said. As a former NYPD officer, she presumed the police would not let the marchers near the Capitol building, but unknown to her, some individuals in high places welcomed chaos.

As Sara approached the Capitol, a policewoman waved her toward an open door. “They’re letting everyone in?” Sara asked. They apparently were. Even before entering, however, she was disturbed by the lack of crowd control. No one was giving vocal commands or directing traffic. Sara wondered to herself, “Why are they letting this happen?” As a former cop, she felt the urge to step in and help out. “I was looking for police,” she explained. “I was looking for them. That’s what led me up the steps.”

Not seeing anyone in control, she floated along with the crowd and found herself in the Rotunda. “It was so calm, so beautiful,” said Sara. She took out her cell phone and shot video of the ceiling. The calm did not last. Suddenly, she heard a man yelling behind her. Wary of crowds, and at five-foot, four-inches, unable to see above them, Sara got caught up in a scrum and appears to have had something of a panic attack. She soon found herself in front of a row of police in tactical gear with a crowd of Trump supporters and/or provocateurs pushing her from behind.

“The cops were giving no vocal commands,” said Sara. “I was waiting for them to act like cops.” Sara is still not quite sure what happened in that encounter, but she felt like a trapped animal. When she confronted the police, one officer pushed her, and she pushed back.

Sara’s street experience seems to have kicked in. “I have been in life threatening situations,” she explained. “A tactic is to look crazy. It gets the other person off balance. Now you control the energy.” At that moment, there is no disputing who controlled the energy, but Sara had no way to channel it. “I didn’t know where to go,” she admitted.

Sara got caught up in another scrum on the way out. Three officers surrounded her and started macing her. She remembers being pushed and nearly trampled. A police officer she approached told her, “A little girl has been shot on the other side.” Sara pulled out a rosary to calm herself.

To the Department of Justice, Sara’s tambourine seemed borderline criminal. It also made her easy to identify. “The CCTV video of the Capitol Rotunda next shows the woman cross the room to an exit,” reads the FBI’s statement of facts. “Before exiting, however, the woman turns back to the room and raises her hands in the air. In her left hand, she holds a tambourine.”

When Sara finally emerged from the building thirty-four minutes after entering, red-faced from the mace, an independent videographer questioned her. “The breach happened,” she said to him on camera. “Congress needs to come out, and President Trump needs to be certified. The crowd needs to move back so no one else gets hurt.” Sara admits to not being herself at the moment. Her ribs were bruised, and she likely suffered a concussion. “I was antagonized, brutalized, entrapped,” she said.

On the way home later that day, Sara called an old friend from grade school who lived not far from I-95 in Maryland. When Sara mentioned she had been at the Capitol, her friend started screaming at Sara. “You killed somebody,” the friend yelled, the “you” referring to the protestors. “You killed a Capitol Police officer with a fire extinguisher.”

The woman’s husband had once been a Capitol Police officer. Sara presumed he had inside information. She had no reason to doubt him or his wife. “It sent me reeling,” said Sara. The next day, said Sara, “I never felt so sick in my life.”

At the time Sara heard about an officer being killed, the alleged victim, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, was very much alive. Video released later would show him matter-of-factly performing his duties at the Capitol after the time of his supposed murder.

The conspirators caught a break on January 7 when Sicknick died after suffering what would prove to be a pair of strokes. Someone in authority—the New York Times would cite “two law enforcement officials”—made the conscious decision to wed Sicknick’s death to the rumored death of an officer by fire extinguisher, a rumor that Sara heard for herself on January 6.

On January 8, the New York Times told its readers that “pro-Trump rioters” were the ones who struck Sicknick with a fire extinguisher. The Times added this chillingly fraudulent detail: “With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.” Not until forced out by a Judicial Watch lawsuit four months later, did the autopsy report tell the true story of Sicknick’s “natural” death.

The FBI came knocking on Sara’s door on January 15, but the wheels of injustice turned slowly, and Sara had time to look for help. Looking did not mean finding. The local attorneys turned her down. The case was too toxic. In her community, Sara became an outcast. Her friend from Maryland sent a Facebook message to a mutual friend in the parish. The word spread. Sara was sure that one of her “friends” had turned her in.

Months after January 6, the media were still pushing the lie that the Capitol protestors had killed a police officer. Murder was not a sin a good Catholic could countenance. “I didn’t go into the Capitol thinking this was going to be the outcome,” said Sara. “They twisted everything. We played right into their hands.” And Sara’s woes were just beginning. They would culminate with her sentencing in November 2023 after nearly three years of twisting in the wind.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump’s speech held promise, and that promise was soon realized. Late that evening Sara heard her name called, and a guard yelled out, “Carpenter, pack your stuff up.” At midnight, the doors opened, and she and Audrey Southard were both freed. Dropped off at the airport, Sara took the first flight to JFK, there boarded the J train, exited at Richmond Hill, and walked down the block to her parents’ house. “It was as if I never left.” The next day she reunited with her back from college. Says Sara, “Then I felt safe. I was home.”

The Sara Carpenter I spoke with last week is a different person from the one with whom I spoke in the months leading up to her imprisonment. She has found her place in the world once again and peace along with it. “God, as we know, “ she told me, “has a plan in the future for all who abide in him.”

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