George Floyd’s death in police custody last May in Minneapolis may have saved another black man’s life in Virginia in December. This story blew up last night online (Richmond Times-Dispatch):
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.
Nazario was driving home at night in a newly-purchased Chevy Tahoe when stopped in Windsor, Virginia, a town of under 3,000 people in the southeast corner of the state. His temporary tag was taped to the rear window, attorney Jonathan Arthur told The Associated Press on Friday.
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.
Vice’s reporting indicates Nazario “slowed down his vehicle within seconds of the police pursuing him and activated his turn signal.” Then he “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.”
In the police video, officers with guns trained on Nazario shout conflicting commands.
“Keep your hands outside the window! Keep your hands outside the window!”
“Get out of the car NOW!”
Exiting would require Nazario to pull his left hand inside the window to open the door and to pull his right hand inside to release the seat belt. So how was Nazario to comply without disobeying one of those commands and being shot and killed for reaching ?
His hands still outside the window, Nazario was cool-headed enough to speak slowly and calmly, and to ask the officer screaming at him to get out of the car to “please calm down.”
Lt. Nazario is lucky he did not die that night. Driving to a well-lit area probably saved him.
Vice quotes the lawsuit:
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.
After officers pepper-sprayed Nazario, dragged him out of the driver’s seat, threw him onto the pavement, handcuffed him, and searched his vehicle … they let him go.
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.
Ironically, the Virginia legislature passed a bill last fall that would prohibit many of these kinds of traffic stops:
The legislation bars police from stopping drivers for a wide range of vehicle equipment offenses — everything from tinted windows to faulty brake lights to loud mufflers to objects dangling from the rear view mirrors. The measure says the cops can’t pull drivers over for having expired vehicle inspection stickers — unless they’re at least three months past due — or for outdated registration tags.
It says police can’t stop cars for driving without headlights at night — though the legislation’s sponsor told the Daily Press Friday that he wasn’t aware of that aspect of the bill until a reporter asked him about it. He said he would look into whether it should be removed.
In another big policy shift, the bill would block police from searching vehicles on the basis that a police officer says he smells marijuana coming from the car.
Reformers have long contended that the practice is open to abuse — with a built-in incentive for officers to lie about smelling an odor — and can perpetuate racial disparities in the justice system.
Gov. Ralph Northam signed the bill after requesting removal of the headlight provision. But it did not take effect until March 1, 2021.
Nazario had to have been terrified. Asked about Nazario’s condition, Arthur said, “He’s definitely not doing too well.”