Million Dollar Lawsuit Virginia Cops Pepper Spray Navy Officer For Driving While Black

A U.S. Army officer is suing two Virginia police officers after a December traffic stop in which the officers drew and pointed their weapons, pepper-sprayed him and used a slang term to suggest he would face execution as he purposefully held both hands aloft in attempts to defuse the situation. Police in Windsor, in southeast Virginia, have yet to issue any comment about the incident involving second lieutenant Caron Nazario, a Black and Latino man who was in uniform when officers ordered him to exit his Chevrolet Tahoe as he held his hands up through the driver’s side window outside a local gas station. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Norfolk and obtained by The Washington Post, alleges the officers violated Nazario’s constitutional rights during the stop and that the officers further threatened to destroy the lieutenant’s military career “with a series of baseless criminal charges“ if he reported them for misconduct. Story