The lawsuit by 2nd Lieutenant Caron Nazario, who is black and Latino, claims $ 1 million in compensatory damages, alleging that two Windsor, Virginia police officers violated his rights guaranteed under the First and Fourth Amendments.
CNN has unsuccessfully tried to reach agents, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, for comment. It is unclear whether they have legal representation that would comment on their behalf. CNN has also contacted Rodney Riddle, Windsor Police Chief and Windsor City Leaders for comment.
The incident was captured by several cameras, including both officers’ body cameras and Nazario’s phone. The footage and lawsuit were obtained by CNN through Nazario’s lawyer.
“I’m honestly afraid to get out,” Nazario overhears the officers after they approach the vehicle with weapons drawn and order him to leave the vehicle.
“Yes,” says Gutierrez, “you should be.”
The driver repeatedly asked the police why he had been arrested
Nazario, who was wearing uniform, was driving a new Chevrolet Tahoe on December 5, 2020, when he was arrested, the lawsuit said. The vehicle was so new that Nazario didn’t have permanent license plates, he says, but had “temporary cardboard plates” stuck to the inside of the rear window.
According to police reports provided as evidence for the trial, Crocker turned on the lights and sirens of his patrol car to initiate a traffic stop at 6:34 PM for a black SUV “with dark-tinted windows” and no license plate.
The lawsuit said the license plate is visible in the bodycam video at three different times. In his police report, Crocker acknowledged seeing the plate later in the altercation.
Nazario’s vehicle continued to travel west at “slow speed,” Crocker wrote in the report, adding that the driver had “ignored” his lights and sirens. “I couldn’t see the inside of the car because of the window tint on all the windows,” Crocker wrote.
Gutierrez, in his own police vehicle heading east, turned, police reports say, stepped behind Crocker’s vehicle and turned on his lights and sirens too.
The SUV pulled up to a BP service station in Windsor, about 30 miles west of Norfolk. The lawsuit says Nazario wanted to stop in a safe, well-lit place. By the time he stopped, according to the lawsuit, he had traveled less than a mile and a minute and 40 seconds had passed since Crocker had activated his lights and siren.
Body cameras show the officers leaving their vehicles, taking their guns out of the trunk and aiming at the SUV. Gutierrez wrote that the officers had decided to perform “a high-risk traffic stop”, citing the lack of a vehicle label, the driver’s delay in stopping and the vehicle’s “extremely dark window tint”.
Crocker orders Nazario to show his hands. Footage shows Nazario obeying after he starts recording the incident on his cell phone, but according to police reports, he initially declined. Crocker asks how many occupants are in the car, while Nazario asks, “What’s wrong?”
The officers tell him again to open the door and go outside. “I’m not getting out of the car,” says Nazario. “What is happening?”
The officers approach the SUV and Nazario says, “I serve this country, and this is how I am treated?” Gutierrez replies that he is a veteran and has “learned to obey”.
Gutierrez is heard telling Nazario that he was “about to ride lightning, son,” describing the lawsuit as an “informal phrase for an execution,” especially with regard to the electric chair.
Body cameras show Gutierrez, gun drawn, loosening the Velcro around what may be his stun gun at the same time as he is making the statement. In his report, Gutierrez writes that at one point he switched from a firearm to the Taser before using pepper spray on Nazario.
‘What have I done?’
Nazario asks again, “What’s the matter? What have I done?”
‘You have received an order. Obey it, ”says Gutierrez. Nazario then replied that he was scared and Gutierrez told him he should be.
Gutierrez then tells the lieutenant that he has been arrested for a “traffic violation” and is “detained” for “obstruction of justice” for not cooperating.
The bodycam footage shows Nazario with his hands up and outside the window as the officers try to open his door. Gutierrez’s report said that when Crocker attempted to unlock and open the driver’s door, Nazario smashed his hand away. The lawsuit said this story is false based on the camera video of the body and despite knowing it was untrue, Gutierrez included it in the report.
Gutierrez then tells Crocker to back off before spraying Nazario with pepper spray four times, the lawsuit said. He keeps yelling at Nazario to take off his seat belt and get out of the car. Nazario says his dog is “choking” from the pepper spray in the back of the car.
With his hands still in the air, Nazario tells the officers, “I’m grabbing my seat belt,” before getting out of the vehicle. The officers order him to the ground while Nazario stops by the vehicle and ask what’s going on.
“You have made this way more difficult than it should have been if you had just adhered to it,” Gutierrez hears in the body’s camera images.
In the footage, the agents wrestle Nazario to the ground and handcuff him as he repeatedly says, “This is f ** ked up.”
Footage shows the trend, the lawsuit says
Paramedics arrive shortly afterwards to treat Nazario for the pepper spray. At Nazario’s request, Crocker also opens the rear window of the vehicle for the dog, who is crated in the back.
Bodycam footage shows Gutierrez telling Nazario that he understood that the lieutenant chose to continue driving before stopping at the gas station for safety reasons, and that it “happens all the time” and “80% of the time – not always. – that it is a minority. “
The officers eventually released Nazario without charge. But the lawsuit alleges that the officers were ‘engaged in conduct in an attempt to’ extort Nazario’s silence by saying ‘in no uncertain terms’ that unless he ‘kept silent’ the officers would ‘charge him with multiple crimes’ and ‘destroy his army. career.”
In the bodycam footage, Gutierrez overhears to Nazario that he had spoken to the police chief and had two options: the officers could either wait with him until he could drive home – “go make your bet, continue serving my country” – and release him without charge. Or they could “push the issue,” write him a ticket for no license plate display and accuse him of obstructing justice.
“It is not necessary to get this on your record”, Gutierrez hears in the bodycam footage. “If you want to fight it and argue … if you want to, we’ll sue you, take you to court, notify the commander, and do all of that,” Gutierrez said.
In his report, Gutierrez wrote that he chose to let Nazario go because he knew the military could take punitive measures against Nazario.
“As a military veteran, I didn’t want his career to be ruined by a wrong decision,” said Gutierrez.
All told, Nazario’s lawsuit says, the images hint at a broader trend among US police officers.
“These cameras captured images of 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 (including issuing unreasonable compliance-or-die orders) disregard the clearly established mandates of the Constitution of these United States and state and local laws, and assume the roles of legislator, judge, jury, and executioner; in the place of the rule of law for their arbitrary and unlawful conduct, ”the lawsuit said.