UPDATE: Army lieutenant Sues Police For Pepper Spraying, Threatening Him During A Traffic Stop
We previously shared the upsetting video showing Army Lt. Caron Nazario’s horrific encounter with two Virginia Police officers. Now, he’s suing them!
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The incident that took place in December 2020 was captured on both body camera footage and Nazario’s cellphone. After it was shared online, it has become the subject of widespread criticism. Nazario who is Black and Latino and a second lieutenant/member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, was in uniform when he was pulled over by the officers. He was on his way home from his duty station, according to the lawsuit. In the clip, he had his hands held in the air outside the driver’s side window as he told the armed officers, “I’m honestly afraid to get out.” “Yeah, you should be!” one of the officers can be heard saying.
According to the AP, Windsor police officer Daniel Crocker radioed the station saying he was attempting to pull over a vehicle with tinted windows that appeared to not have a rear license plate. Officer Crocker reportedly labeled it a “high-risk traffic stop,” as he claimed the driver was “eluding police.” Nazario denied that he was trying to escape the officers. Instead saying at the time that he was driving home from his duty station and wanted to stop in a well-lit area “for officer safety and out of respect for the officers.” The other Officer Joe Gutierrez responded to Crocker’s call for backup and joined him in the traffic stop.
“I have not committed any crime,” the Army officer says in the video, to which one of the officers shouts, “You’re being stopped for a traffic violation. You’re not cooperating, and at this point, right now, you’re under arrest. … You’re being detained for obstruction of justice,” The Hill quotes.
After being pepper-sprayed for not getting out of fear, Nazario eventually exits the vehicle with his eyes clenched shut from the pepper spray, the officers forcibly throw him to the ground as he repeatedly says, “Please talk to me about what’s going on.”
The lawsuits state the “behavior consistent with a disgusting nationwide trend of law enforcement officers, who, believing they can operate with complete impunity, engage in unprofessional, discourteous, racially-biased, dangerous and sometimes deadly abuses of authority.” His lawsuit filed earlier this month said that officers violated his constitutional rights during the traffic stop in the southeastern town of Windsor, located about 46 miles west of Virginia Beach.
Jonathan Arthur, Nazario’s attorney, told the AP that the Army officer is a graduate from Virginia State University and was commissioned out of the school’s ROTC program. He noted that “he’s definitely not doing too well” after the incident with police.
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