A US army veteran who was pepper sprayed by police in December 2020 is seeking damages of $1 million with his trial about to begin.
On 5 December, 2020, 2nd Lieutenant Caron Nazario was pulled over by a pair of police officers at a gas station in Windsor, Virginia.
Police say they pulled Lt Nazario over because his vehicle lacked a visible rear licence plate, but in the bodycam footage, a temporary plate hanging in his rear window can be seen.
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The footage from officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker shows Nazario initially being ordered to put his hands out of the window before officers order him to exit the vehicle.
Nazario, who is black and Latino, is heard to say he was 'honestly afraid to get out' of his car, to which one of the police officers shouted 'yeah, you should be'.
The bodycam footage also showed officer Gutierrez pepper spraying Nazario as he sat in the driver's seat of his vehicle with his hands up.
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At one point, Gutierrez warns the army veteran he is 'fixing to ride the lightning', a slang term which can refer to the electric chair, according to the lawsuit. But the officers say in their court filings that was a reference to one of the officers holstering his gun and drawing his taser instead.
In the police report of the incident, one officer claimed Nazario attempted to elude police efforts to pull him over by not stopping immediately, while Nazario's lawyer says his client wanted to pull his vehicle over in a well lit area.
Nazario was released without charge, later suing the two Windsor police officers for a total of $1 million in damages, claiming his constitutional rights were violated and alleging that he was assaulted during the incident.
The trial is set to begin today (9 January) in a federal court in Richmond, Virginia, with Nazario set to tell the jury that he believes he was falsely imprisoned and his vehicle illegally searched along with the claims of assault.
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In a court filing, the police officers have denied the allegations made against them, with Officer Crocker's legal team claiming 'contact with Nazario was within justifiable bounds in performance of his duties as a law enforcement officer'.
Since the incident in 2020, Windsor police department have announced that they fired officer Gutierrez in the same month that Nazario filed his lawsuit seeking damages.
Around that time, Windsor police chief Rodney Riddle said his officers 'missed opportunities to verbally de-escalate' the situation, but didn't believe the officers owed Nazario an official apology and said things would have been easier had the army veteran 'complied a whole lot earlier'.
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A lawyer for Nazario said his client feared for his life during the incident, with attorney Jonathan Arthur claiming that the army veteran was afraid to lower his hands to undo his seatbelt so he could exit his vehicle as officers were demanding of him.
Joe Harker