Black Army Officer Pepper-Sprayed in Traffic Stop Accuses Officers of Assault | 2021-04-11 16:56:08 (Visits: 413 Times) |  | | photo:Caron Nazario, an Army lieutenant, was driving through Windsor, Va., on Dec. 5, 2020, when two officers drew guns and doused him with pepper spray, according to a lawsuit filed this month.CreditCredit...via Tom Roberts, Esq.
By Mike Ives and Maria Cramer Published April 10, 2021
Updated April 11, 2021, 11:09 a.m. ET
Second Lt. Caron Nazario was in uniform when two Windsor, Va., police officers ordered him to stop his car, pointed their weapons at him and doused him with pepper spray.Caron Nazario, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, was driving to Petersburg, Va., from a drill weekend the night of Dec. 5 when he saw police lights flashing behind him.Too nervous to stop on a darkened road, Lieutenant Nazario, who is Black and Latino, drove about a mile to a gas station, pulled over and placed his cellphone on his dashboard, according to a lawsuit and video footage of the encounter.Immediately, two Windsor police officers can be heard yelling orders at him.“Get out of the car,” one yells as Lieutenant Nazario, remaining seated, repeatedly asks why he had been stopped and why the officers had drawn their guns. He positions his empty hands outside the window.“I’m honestly afraid to get out of the car,” Lieutenant Nazario says.“Yeah,” says one of the officers, Joe Gutierrez, according to footage from his body camera. “You should be.”Seconds later, Officer Gutierrez doused the lieutenant with pepper spray. Lieutenant Nazario’s hands remained up as he coughed and pleaded with the officers to undo his seatbelt and make sure his dog, Smoke, was not choking in the back. Liquid from the spray dripped down his hands and face.Dig deeper into the moment.Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week.Lieutenant Nazario, 27, a graduate of Virginia State University, filed a lawsuit this month in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It accuses the officers of illegally searching his car, using excessive force and violating his rights under the First Amendment. The lawsuit seeks $1 million in compensatory damages.Lieutenant Nazario also accused the officers of threatening to destroy his military career by charging him with multiple crimes if he complained about their conduct, according to the complaint, which was reported this week by The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.Officer Gutierrez and the other officer named in the lawsuit, Daniel Crocker, did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday. Chief Rodney Daniel Riddle of the Windsor Police Department did not respond to messages.The police force in Windsor, a rural town of about 2,700 people about 30 miles west of Norfolk, consists of six members: a chief, a first sergeant, a detective and three officers, according to the town’s website. |
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