On December 5th, 2020 two police officers in Windsor, Virginia assaulted an Afro-Latino US army veteran for alleged defiance of a traffic stop. 

Bodycam footage documents the police officer pepper spraying Lieutenant Nazario despite his pleas for de-escalation. The officers’ justified their assault under the pretext of Nazario’s initial resistance to the officers’ directives. 

The officers reported that Lt. Nazario tried to elude them by not pulling over right away, and when he did he was reluctant to step out of his car.  

The officers consequently grew more hostile: pulling out their guns and then pepper spraying Nazario.  

The Windsor Police department, later on, fired the officer who had pepper sprayed Nazario for not following department policy during the incident. 

Read next: New US Police Brutality Discrepancies Revealed in Official Records

Two years after this incident of police brutality, Nazario has filed a lawsuit against both police officers under charges of violation of constitutional rights, assault, false imprisonment, and illegal inspection of his car. 

The lawsuit ended up reducing the incident into an isolated incident whereby the plaintiff aims to indict the officers for exceptionally disproportionate violence while the defense is arguing that the officers were within the justifiable bounds of the officers’ law enforcement duties. The legal route decontextualizes the incident from the pattern of racially-motivated police brutality in the US. 

You can view the complete video of the assault on Nazario below.