A violent, threatened stop by a Black and Latinx Army officer, 2nd Lieutenant Caron Nazario, has drawn new attention to the extent of police misconduct while the world overcomes the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd it, watch. .
The incident, which took place in December 2020 in Windsor, Virginia, was scrutinized after the release of footage of the body and after Nazario filed a case against the officers in early April. On Saturday, Virginia government Ralph Northam announced an investigation into what he called a “disturbing” incident.
Nazario said he was driving through eastern Virginia when he saw police lights flashing behind him. He does not stop immediately, but turns on his hazard lights and goes slowly to a well-lit gas station. His decision to do so – as well as the tinted windows and the temporary license plate on his new SUV – apparently led to officers deciding to take a “high-risk traffic stop”.
Given this perceived level of risk, Officer Daniel Crocker got out of his police vehicle and aimed his rifle immediately at Nazario’s car, shouting at the lieutenant to ‘get out of the car now.’
“What is happening?” Vra Nazario. “I’m honestly scared to come out.”
“Yes, it must be you, go out now!” another officer, Joe Gutierrez, could be heard immediately afterwards.
Despite Nazario’s questions, officers did not tell Nazario why he was being pulled over: it was because they could not see a license plate on his vehicle. The car was new; a temporary cardboard license plate was pasted on Nazario’s rear window.
Instead, they tried to open Nazario’s door by force, even though Nazario insisted he did not have to get out of his vehicle due to a traffic violation. Gutierrez then sprayed Nazario four times with pepper spray and shouted at him to get out of the car while Nazario asked for help to loosen his seat belt. As soon as he could free himself, the lieutenant was forcibly pushed to the ground.
“Can you please talk to me about what’s going on?” Vra Nazario. “Why am I being treated like this, why?”
‘Because you’re not working together! Get on the ground! Lie down, otherwise you will be bored, ”one of the officers could hear; At some point, Gutierrez can be heard saying, “You’re driving lightning, boy.
Eventually, Nazario was not arrested; When paramedics arrived on the scene to treat Nazario for the pepper spray, Gutierrez said he had spoken to the police chief, and the department planned to release the lieutenant without any charges.
“It’s not necessary to get it on your record,” Gutierrez said in the camera recording. “I do not want it on your record. However, it depends on you. “If you want to fight and fight against it … if that’s what you want, we will charge you,” Gutierrez said.
According to Nazario, the offer is an attempt at quid pro quo. The lieutenant claims that he was told he would not ‘chill and let this go’, officers would ensure that his military record would be damaged. Nazario responded by telling officers he would let his superiors know what had happened.
Gutierrez says in the footage that it will be understandable given ‘the climate we are in, with the media stemming from racial relations against minorities’, but that any legal action by Nazario’ does not change my life in any way. ”
Eventually, the incident did change his life; he was fired after an investigation into the incident by the Windsor police station. However, his shooting has raised the question of whether there are some “bad apples” in policing, or whether such behavior that he and Crocker displayed in December is part of a larger problem with policing.
Police misconduct is a systemic problem
Gutierrez’s shooting came because his department found during the traffic stop that the policy of the Windsor police had not been followed.
“The city of Windsor is proud of its small – town charm and the mutual respect for its police department,” the department said in a press release Sunday. “As a result, we are saddened by such events to put our community in a negative light. Instead of diverting criticism, we have addressed these issues administratively with our staff, but we reach out to stakeholders in the community to engage in discussion and commit ourselves to additional discussions in the future. ”
The statement is consistent with a statement by Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo about the behavior of his former officer Derek Chauvin the day George Floyd died. The evidence during the murder and manslaughter trial over Chauvin was that Arradondo and other law enforcement officials were particularly passionate about distancing his police department from Chauvin’s actions.
“It is in no way, form or form something that is in accordance with policy,” he said. “It’s not part of our training. It is certainly not part of our ethics or our values. ”
As Fabiola Cineas of Vox writes, statements such as these are part of the police’s effort to avoid further investigation into their practices:
Although the testimony of the officers can be interpreted as a changing tide in an opaque culture, it is likely that the sensational nature of the trial forces them to view Chauvin as the bad apple – the one officer who does not represent the broader department not. and system of policing, the one they have to throw away – as a way to avoid greater police investigation.
But if excessive violence is observed by the police everywhere, not just in Minneapolis, or in St. Louis; Louis, not in Louisville or Rochester – but in Windsor, Virginia, a city about 50 miles west of Virginia Beach and home to just under 3,000 people, it only adds to the narrative that racist police violence is systemic. The steps taken by the Windsor Police Department are consistent with all the testimonies of officers in Minneapolis. An immediate distance from Gutierrez, an admonition. Such things do not happen here.
The magnitude of prominent incidents of bad policing makes it clear that something is wrong across the US, and research has shown that there is also a national problem with traffic jams. The Stanford Open Policing Project, after analyzing nearly 100 million traffic jams in the U.S., found that black drivers were about 20 percent more likely to be pulled over by police for traffic offenses. And once that happens, black drivers will be searched 1.5 to 2 times more than white drivers, though white drivers are statistically more likely to have drugs, guns or other smuggled goods in their cars, according to the decade-long study conducted by researchers at Stanford and New York University.
And there are a number of bad consequences for black drivers at bus stops that underscore exactly why Nazario told officers he was’ honestly afraid to get out ‘, from the arrest of Sandra Bland to the death of Philando Castile, to’ a more recent example. .
On Sunday, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, was killed near Minneapolis during a traffic stop by a police officer who mistaken her taser as a gun after walking back into his vehicle after a brief fight.
Nazario was not killed, but incidents like this show why he may have had reason to fear he would be.