Police approached the vehicle of Caron Nazario, a Black Latino Army Officer in uniform, during a traffic stop last December, yelling at him to get out of the car. The man told officers, who had their loaded guns aimed at him, "I'm honestly afraid to get out."
He was avoiding movements that could be interpreted as reaching for a weapon.
One of the officers screamed in response to his fears, "Yeah! You should be!"
Nazario continued to hold his hands in the air as officers attempted to pull him from the vehicle. Police Officer Joe Gutierrez, failing to drag the uniformed Army Officer from his car, stepped back and pepper-sprayed Nazario several times through his window.
“I don’t even want to reach for my seatbelt, can you please? … My hands are out, can you please — look, this is really messed up,” Nazario stammered upon being pepper-sprayed, his eyes clenched shut.
The police officers shouted contradictory orders, telling Nazario simultaneously to reach down and open his car door AND to hold his arms out the window. At one point, Gutierrez apparently yelled that Nazario was “fixin’ to ride the lightning,” which some have suggested was a reference to an electric chair from the movie "The Green Mile," about a man facing execution.
Edit: Others point out that Gutierrez was brandishing a tazer at the time, so maybe it was just a threat to unnecessarily electrocute the Army Officer with a tazer.
After Nazario finally was allowed to get out of his vehicle, he asked for a supervisor. Gutierrez responded with "knee-strikes" to his legs, knocking him to the ground. Officers struck him several times, then handcuffed the Army Officer and began interrogating him.
Get this: All this began with a traffic stop over tinted windows and invalid vehicle tags. Turns out, the car did have tags.
Gutierrez called in the stop as "high risk," and a report submitted by Officer Crocker following the incident concurs, claiming the suspect was "evading police" because Nazario chose to drive to a well-lit location outside a gas station rather than pulling over alongside the road.
Apparently, this is a common choice for minority drivers who wish to avoid discrimination or assault by police. In this case, I guess it didn't do very much good.
Imagine how you might respond to having several guns pointed at your head. Several conflicting orders are being shouted at you. Complying with them or making any movement at all could lead to your death.
Thankfully, Caron Nazario is an Army Officer with exceptional, OUTRAGEOUS levels of discipline. He could've been just another dead Black man being demonized by Fox News. Instead, he's alive suing for damages. The suit claims that the officers violated his constitutional rights and seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
"Police pull guns on and spray Black-Latino Army officer during traffic stop, lawsuit says" https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-pull-guns-spray-black-latino-army-officer/story?id=76992531
I will say, this incident does not look well for the officers involved. Thankfully, it seems they are being punished accordingly (according to the linked article, one of them has been terminated).