A US Army officer has charged two Virginia police officers over an incident in December that was caught on camera footage of the body in which police pulled their weapons and sprayed him with pepper spray.
Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the military, said in a lawsuit filed earlier this month that officers violated his constitutional rights during a traffic stop in the southeastern town of Windsor, about 74 miles west of Virginia Beach.
In the images shared online by The Associated PressNazario, who is black and Latino, is dressed in his uniform and holds up his hands as he sits in his parked car at a gas station while the cops aim their guns at him.
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The officers order Nazario to get out of his car, to which he responds, “I’m really scared to get out.”
“Yes, you should be!” he heard one of the officers say.
According to the AP, Windsor police officer Daniel Crocker radioed to the station, saying he tried to run over a vehicle with tinted windows that did not appear to have a rear license plate.
Crocker reportedly called it a “ high-risk traffic stop ” because he claimed the driver “ escaped the police. ”
Nazario, however, denied trying to escape from the officer, but said at the time that he was driving home from his station and wanted to stop in a well-lit area “for the safety of the officers and out of respect for the officers.”
Another officer, Joe Gutierrez, responded to Crocker’s call for help and joined him at the traffic stop.
The lawsuit alleged that once officers arrived at the gas station, the license plate on the SUV was clearly visible, but the two officers immediately drew their weapons and aimed them at Nazario.
Nazario can be heard in the footage trying to talk to the officers as they repeatedly tell him to get out of the car.
“I have not committed any crime,” the army officer says in the video, whereupon one of the officers shouts, “You are being stopped for a traffic violation. You are not cooperating, and you are currently under arrest. … you are being held for obstruction of justice. ”
After one of the officers tried to open the car door, Gutierrez stepped back and sprayed Nazario with pepper spray several times.
At one point, Gutierrez can hear Nazario say that he was ‘about to ride the lightning’, a reference to the electric chair and a line from the movie ‘The Green Mile’, in which a black man is executed.
When Nazario finally exits the vehicle with his eyes squeezed from the pepper spray, the officers force him to the ground, saying repeatedly, “Please talk to me about what’s going on.”
The lawsuit argued in part that the captured images “exhibit behavior consistent with a disgusting nationwide trend of law enforcement officers who, believing they can operate with complete impunity, engage in unprofessional, rude, racially biased, dangerous, and sometimes lethal abuse. of authority. ”
Jonathan Arthur, Nazario’s attorney, told the AP that the army officer had graduated from Virginia State University and had been removed from the school’s ROTC program, adding that “he’s certainly not doing very well” after the incident with the Police.
The Hill has contacted Windsor Police for comment.