Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring is suing the town of Windsor over a year after a December 2020 traffic stop where police officers pepper-sprayed and threatened a Black and Latino Army officer, which was caught on bodycam footage.
U.S. Army officer Lt. Caron Nazario faced “egregious treatment,” according to the AG who wrote that an investigation found Black drivers faced “huge” disparities in traffic stops and that a “troubling lack of policies and procedures” were in place over such incidents.
“Our months-long investigation uncovered huge disparities in enforcement against African American drivers, and a troubling lack of policies and procedures to prevent discriminatory or unconstitutional policing,” Herring shared in a release. “We even discovered evidence that officers were actually being trained to go ‘fishing’ and engage in pretextual stops.”
The suit, which was filed Thursday in Isle of Wight Circuit Court according to CNN, argues that the town’s police department “lacks adequate policies to ensure that it is using force in a non-discriminatory manner, that it is performing traffic stops in a constitutional, non-pretextual, and bias-free manner, and that members of the public are able to submit and have their complaints heard in a transparent way that upholds the principles of due process.”
In addition, it shares that the town “violated the Virginia Human Rights Act (‘VHRA’) and the Virginia Public Integrity and Law Enforcement Misconduct Act (‘VPLEM’) in its provision of law enforcement services through the Windsor Police Department.”
Windsor Chief Rodney Daniel Riddle emailed a “statement from the town” and department, per the New York Times, that claimed the decision to file a lawsuit was “clearly political.”
“Windsor, including its police department, remains vigilant in protecting the rights of all residents of the town, Isle of Wight County, Commonwealth of Virginia and nation, regardless of race or gender, who pass through its limits,” the statement read.
From July 2020 through September 2021, Black drivers made up 42% of Windsor’s traffic stops, according to the AG’s investigation, as Black residents were stopped 200% to 500% more often than what would be expected of the town’s population.
After Nazario’s stop, which officers claim took place over a missing plate, officer Joe Gutierrez was fired from the department in April, per the NYT. Nazario also sued for $1 million in damages and claimed First and Fourth Amendment violations, which the officers deny.
“We hope with this lawsuit the Town of Windsor will take this matter seriously and they will have no other choice but to sit down and have a results-driven conversation with the African American community,” Valerie Cofer Butler, Isle of Wight County NAACP chapter president, told the Times.
