The Army lieutenant who was seen on video being pepper-sprayed and detained by Windsor Police during a December 2020 traffic stop made his first public comments since the video went viral and his attorney filed a million-dollar federal lawsuit against the officers who stopped him.
“This has truly been a challenging experience and also a life-changing experience not just for me by also for my family,” Lt. Caron Nazario said in a brief speech April 20 in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was honored by his hometown for his military service. “Through this challenging experiencem I’ve seen an outpouring of love and support around the world.”
Watch the entire video presentation. Nazario’s remarks come at the end.
Nazario, who now lives in Petersburg, was stopped Dec. 5, 2020 on U.S. Route 460 as he returned from a medical corps assignment in Norfolk. In video footage captured on body cameras and Nazario’s phone, the two officers point their weapons at Nazario and demand he get out of his vehicle. As Nazario keeps his hands out of the window and asks repeatedly why he was stopped, one of the officers pepper-sprays him.
Nazario is eventually removed from his vehicle and handcuffed. Later, the officers can be heard telling him he was free to go but to remain silent about the stop.
One of the officers involved, Joe Gutierrez, was eventually fired by the police chief after the video of the stop began circulating. The other officer, identified as Daniel Crocker, was reprimanded but remains in uniform.
Earlier this month, Nazario’s attorney, Jonathan Arthur of Richmond, filed a federal lawsuit in Norfolk against the two officers claiming that Nazario’s First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated by how the stop unfolded.
“I would like to say thank you to my home community of Bedford Stuyvesant, all of Brooklyn, everyoe around the world. Just thank you for your support,” Nazario said in the video, “I truly appreciate it.”
Nazario did not mention the traffic stop. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Borough president who presented Nazario with the proclamation, did, however.
Adams saluted Nazario’s grandmother, a former police department employee, for instilling respect in her grandson. He also thanked God “for Steve Jobs’ invention of a camera on the phone” because that, along with Nazario’s calm demeanor seen in the video, probably saved Nazario’s life that day.
“If this brother did not have that video and the discipline he showed, I don’t know what the outcome would have been,” Adams said, “His level and discipline and poise, I believed, saved his life. He’s a better man than me.”
Adams also noted Nazario’s military duty, saying, “He’s protecting the soil of this country. There’s nothing more challenging than protecting the soil that held the tree than hung your ancestors.”
He joined other advocates both in Virginia and around the nation in calling for more than Gutierrez’s termination, saying it was “not enough.” The former officer should be arrested, Adams claimed.
“He intentionally assaulted someone, and to merely fire him is sending the wrong message,” the isaid.
The NAACP in Isle of Wight County, where Windsor is located, is also calling for the resignation of Windsor Police Chief Rodney D. Riddle over the handling of the internal investigation into the stop but for also saying that he did not think Nazario was owed an official apology for how he was treated.
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(c)2021 The Progress-Index, Petersburg, Va.
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