Lawsuit: Virginia police officers threatened man during stop

[GMDino]

Pray tell me what someone can do to avoid this?  I'm just tired of being told how "rare" it is when there are stories every day. It's just so dam sad and frustrating and it doesn't seem like the officers ever get punished for it.  How do you "do what the officer says" when two are yelling different things?  Who do you come out with guns pulled and aimed after you see the plate IS visible and YOU made the mistake?





https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/lawsuit-virginia-police-officers-threatened-man-stop-76982103

Quote:WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- A second lieutenant in the U.S. Army is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop last December during which the officers drew their guns, pointed them at him and used a slang term to suggest he was facing execution before pepper-spraying him and knocking him to the ground.


Body camera footage shows Caron Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was dressed in uniform with 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 responded during the stop at a gas station.


In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, Nazario says his constitutional rights were violated during the traffic stop in the town of Windsor. The two sides in the case dispute what happened after a second police officer joined the first one in the stop. At the time, Nazario was coming from his duty station and going home, attorney Jonathan Arthur told The Associated Press on Friday.


“Graduated from Virginia State University. He was commissioned out of their ROTC program. He's an officer in the United States armed forces,” Arthur said. “These guys decide to do this to him.”


Asked about Nazario's condition after the incident, Arthur said, “He's definitely not doing too well.”


Windsor Police Officer Daniel Crocker radioed he was attempting to stop a vehicle with no rear license plate and tinted windows. He said the driver was “eluding police” and he considered it a “high-risk traffic stop,” according to a report he submitted afterward and which was included in the court filing.


Arthur said Nazario explained at the time that he wasn't trying to elude the officer, but was trying to stop in a well-lit area “for officer safety and out of respect for the officers.”

Another officer, Joe Gutierrez, was driving by when he heard Crocker’s call, saw him attempting to stop the SUV and decided to join the traffic stop. Gutierrez acknowledged that Nazario's decision to drive to a lighted area happens to him “a lot, and 80% of the time, it's a minority,” Arthur said, quoting the officer.


The lawsuit says by the time the two officers reached Nazario's SUV, the license plate was visible in the rear.


Nazario drove his SUV to a well-lit gas station where, according to the lawsuit, the two officers got out and immediately drew their guns and pointed them at Nazario after they got out of their cars. The officers then attempted to pull Nazario out of the vehicle while he continued to keep his hands in the air. Gutierrez then stepped back and pepper-sprayed Nazario multiple times as officers yelled for him to get out of the car.


“I don't even want to reach for my seatbelt, can you please? ... My hands are out, can you please — look, this is really messed up,” Nazario stammered upon being pepper-sprayed, his eyes clenched shut.


The officers shouted conflicting orders at Nazario, telling him to put his hands out the window while also telling him to open the door and get out, the lawsuit says. At one point, Gutierrez told Nazario he was “fixin’ to ride the lightning,” a reference to the electric chair which was also a line from the movie “The Green Mile,” a film about a Black man facing execution.


Nazario got out of the vehicle and again asked for a supervisor. Gutierrez responded with “knee-strikes” to his legs, knocking him to the ground, the lawsuit says. The two officers struck him multiple times, then handcuffed and interrogated him.


The traffic stop was captured on Nazario's cellphone video, and the body-worn cameras worn by Crocker and Gutierrez, according to the lawsuit.


“These cameras captured footage of 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 ...” the lawsuit says.


The AP reached out to Windsor police for comment, but an email was not returned and their voice mailbox was full. No one answered the phone at a number listed for Crocker on Friday.


Crocker and Gutierrez still work for the department, the town manager told The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. Windsor is about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Richmond.

Doesn't matter to me who you are, as human being we should be disgusted that anyone was treated this way when they are complying.  But hey the officer "decided" to not press charges...after he realized how wrong he was.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dm3m/cops-caught-on-video-holding-a-black-army-lieutenant-at-gunpoint-then-pepper-spraying-him

Quote:When Lt. Caron Nazario said he was afraid to get out of the vehicle, one officer responded, “Yeah, you should be."
[/url]EO
By Emma Ockerman
April 9, 2021, 12:37pm


SCREEN CAPTURE OF WINDSOR POLICE DEPARTMENT BODY CAMERA FOOTAGE FROM THE DEC. 5, 2020 INCIDENT. 

Caron Nazario was driving his newly purchased Chevy Tahoe home when two police officers pulled him over in Windsor, Virginia, whipped out their guns, and started barking orders. 

With their weapons raised, the officers demanded that Nazario, a Black and Latino man, get out of the SUV. Nazario looked in the mirror and saw he was being held at gunpoint, then placed his cellphone on his dashboard to film the December 5 encounter. He repeatedly asked to know what was going on. At one point, he even admitted to being afraid to leave the vehicle.

“Yeah, you should be,” one of the officers responded. 

Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, was coming home from work and in full uniform at the time.

“I’m serving this country, and this is how I’m treated?” Nazario told the officers, according to his cellphone video.

WATCH: A new lawsuit claims Windsor police officers drew guns, pepper-sprayed uniformed Army officer during traffic stop. More at 5 on #13NewsNow pic.twitter.com/OQotHHnb47

— Ali Weatherton 13News Now (@13AliWeatherton) April 8, 2021

 

By the end of the incident, the cops would threaten Nazario, pepper-spray him in the face, and knee-strike him in the legs, according to body camera footage, Nazario’s cellphone video, and legal filings. Later, when Nazario was in tears and on the ground of a gas station parking lot as officers put him in handcuffs, he repeated, “This is F***** up, this is ****** up.” 

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The officers allegedly told Nazario if he were to complain, they’d charge him with crimes like obstruction, eluding, and assault on a law enforcement officer—potentially destroying his military career. 

But now Nazario has a lawyer. And he sued the two Windsor police officers, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, on April 2, alleging violations of his constitutional rights under the Fourth and First Amendments. 

“He’s a sworn member of the United States Army. He swears an oath to support to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic—and the way these officers behaved, this implicates the oath that he takes,” said Jonathan Arthur, an attorney for Nazario. 

Arthur said Nazario thinks he was racially profiled. His hope with the lawsuit is to hold the officers accountable and send a message to other law enforcement officers “that this type of behavior will not be tolerated,” Arthur said.






The Windsor Police Department and Gutierrez did not immediately respond to VICE News’ requests for comment. Contact information for Crocker wasn’t immediately available. 

The incident ostensibly began after an officer believed Nazario was driving on U.S. Route 460 without a rear license plate, according to the lawsuit. While the SUV was new to Nazario, meaning he hadn’t gotten permanent plates yet, he still had a temporary plate taped to the inside of his rear window, the lawsuit notes. The temporary tags are visible in the body camera footage. 

Nazario slowed down his vehicle within seconds of the police pursuing him and activated his turn signal. Because it was dark, Nazario also drove for less than a mile—below the posted speed limit—until he reached a well-lit BP gas station, where he pulled over. In all, it took about 1 minute, 40 seconds for Nazario to pull over after Crocker initiated the stop, according to the lawsuit. 

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Police Screamed at a 5-Year-Old and Told Him Handcuffs Would Be His ‘Best Friend’
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[url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7amde/police-screamed-at-a-5-year-old-and-told-him-handcuffs-would-be-his-best-friend]
Still, the cops claimed in a report Nazario was “eluding police,” had a dark window tint, and lacked plates, so officers treated the incident as a “felony traffic stop,” or a traffic stop they believed to be risky. One of the officers admitted later that they knew why Nazario had pulled into the BP—it happened all the time, and was a maneuver often used by people of color, according to the lawsuit.

Once he was in the BP parking lot, Nazario was ordered to put his hands out of his car window and turn the vehicle off, according to body camera footage. He was also ordered to get out of the vehicle multiple times by both officers as he asked, “What’s going on?” 

The officers were not “willing or able to articulate why they had initiated the traffic stop,” according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez told Nazario, who did not immediately get out of the car despite repeated orders to do so, that he was “fixin’ to ride the lightning,” according to body camera footage.

“This is a colloquial expression for an execution, originating from glib reference to execution by the electric chair,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Gutierrez attempted to remove Nazario from the car with an “arm-bar,” but failed, according to the lawsuit. The officer pepper-sprayed Nazario in the face and continued to order him out of the SUV, body camera footage shows. The pepper spray caused Nazario’s dog, which was in a crate in the back of the vehicle, to start choking, according to the lawsuit. 

After Nazario got out of the vehicle, he was allegedly hit with “knee-strikes” to the legs. Officers continued to strike him after he was on the ground and in tears, according to the lawsuit. 

Once Nazario was in handcuffs, the officers pulled him up and began to interrogate him. Medics also responded to provide assistance to Nazario, who said his eyes were burning. 

Meanwhile, Crocker searched Nazario’s SUV  “without permission or authority” to locate a firearm that Nazario said he had, according to the lawsuit. Crocker “radioed the serial number back to dispatch to see if the firearm was stolen.”

While interrogating Nazario, Gutierrez said the problem was that Nazario hadn’t exited the vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
Nazario was told that he could leave without charges if he would “chill and let this go,” according to the lawsuit—or, he could be charged, have to go to court, and face the consequences in his military career.

The body camera footage adds to the many documented, aggressive police traffic stops of non-white people that have drawn attention in recent years.

“I made the decision to release him without charges,” an incident report narrative from Gutierrez, submitted in the lawsuit as an exhibit, reads. “The reason for this decision is simple; the military is the only place left where double jeopardy applies. Meaning that regardless of what happened in civilian court the military could still take punitive actions against him.”

“Being a military veteran,” Gutierrez’s report continued, “I did not want to see his career ruined over one erroneous decision.” 

Hand where we can see them! Get out of the car! Don't reach!  Well since you can't do everything we'll pepper spray you and beat you.  Wonderful way to handle a traffic stop"  Good training.